Ronda Rousey doesn’t have any animosity towards Gina Carano ahead of their upcoming fight, but that’s certainly not the case when it comes to reigning UFC women’s bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison.
While things stayed painfully cordial between Rousey and Carano, the UFC Hall of Famer erupted when she was asked about Harrison’s recent comments about her. Back in March, Harrison took aim at Rousey after she talked about an exercise that takes place between judokas, where it’s like a marathon training session with the person in the middle staying there until somebody beats them. Rousey is an Olympic bronze medalist in judo and once shared as pot on the same U.S. team as Harrison, who went onto become a two-time Olympic gold medalist in judo.
“So she’s online telling this story about how, ‘Yeah, I had a lot of pride so I’d be out there for an hour with these girls and then finally a 90-kilo guy would take pity on me and come out and throw me,’” Harrison said. “Dude, that is literally a blatant f*cking lie. Now you’re just making shit up. That never happened.”
On Wednesday, Rousey responded in a fiery retort.
“[Kayla] says that I lied about training in judo in Canada in 2006. Who the f*ck are you to call me a liar?” Rousey said. “I was training there for five months. Bitch, you weren’t even there. Over the last decade and a half of being a public figure, I have cultivated a reputation for being unabashedly truthful. This bitch just got here and was already caught in a lie.
“What did she say after she won the belt? ‘Oh, I’m never going to say anything bad about Ronda, she took care of me when I was broke in Japan, and she bought me groceries.’ How about you shut the f*ck up and eat your groceries?”
During that same interview from March, Harrison also lamented that the Rousey vs. Carano fight is being touted as the biggest fight in women’s MMA history, with the competitors involved returning from a combined 27 years out of action. Rousey last fought in 2016 when she suffered a second straight knockout loss before leaving the UFC, and Carano hasn’t competed since 2009 when she was finished by Cris Cyborg in Strikeforce.
Harrison called Rousey “irrelevant” at this stage of the game, especially as she prepares to defend her UFC title against Amanda Nunes, who is widely considered the greatest of all-time in women’s MMA. Nunes was also the person who sent Rousey packing in her final UFC fight.
“Gina is so relevant that she’s the whole reason the 145-pound division even exists. I am so relevant that the only reason she has a job at the UFC is because of me,” Rousey ranted. “Kayla is so irrelevant that she couldn’t even keep the 145-pound division around. Honestly, she’s just sour because no matter what she does or what she accomplishes, she can’t change the fact that she has the charisma of a wet towel and will always be in me and Gina’s shadow.
“So the next time she wants to talk shit, she should look down at her feet and consider who paved the road that she’s walking on. Oh wait, she can’t look down at her feet because she’s too busy holding onto the belt in a neck brace.”
That last insult stems from Harrison recently undergoing neck surgery that delayed her fight against Nunes, which was originally scheduled for UFC 324 in January.
But even that cancelled fight got Rousey heated because Harrison vs. Nunes was supposed to serve as the co-main event on the card, with an interim lightweight title fight between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett set as the headliner.
“Her and Hunter [Campbell] acting like her next upcoming fight is the biggest women’s fight of all time,” Rousey said. “Then why is it being booked as a co-main for a men’s interim title fight?
“The bitch isn’t even bigger than Paddy the Baddy [Pimblett]. No offense to Paddy. He’s got more potential than anybody in the UFC, and he should call me when his contract runs out.”
With Netflix backing the Rousey vs. Carano card with more than 325 million subscribers, it’s easy to believe that the event is going to draw sizable viewership numbers.
So Rousey could only scoff at the suggestion that Harrison’s fight against Nunes is going to outdraw her upcoming showdown against Carano.
In fact, Rousey believes her fight against Carano is going to crush every record when they finally set foot in the cage on May 16.
“If she thinks that her fight is the biggest women’s fight of all-time, why is she getting paid less now than I was 10 years ago?” Rousey said. “So riddle me this, bitch, are you overvalued or are you overpaid? What really pisses me off more than anything else is how small she thinks. This is not just the biggest women’s fight of all time; this is the biggest MMA fight of all time, it’s going to get the most views on the biggest platform on the card with the biggest stars, and it was assembled by and will be headlined by two women who dared to dream big.
“This dream is going to bring more opportunities and greater revenue share to fighters than they’ve ever had before because this fight is bigger than just me and Gina. It’s bigger than anybody on this stage. It represents an unstoppable force of change in this industry, spearheaded by the fighters themselves. You bet your f*cking ass this is the biggest MMA fight of all time. Bar none.”
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