Ronda Rousey is set to leave WWE soon. But does this mean the 36-year-old WWE Superstar and mixed martial artist is returning to UFC? Ahead of the WWE contract news, Jon Anik, a commentator for UFC, talked about a possible Rousey return on the YouTube show MMA Fighting and said that Rousey could get back in the octagon now that her old foe, Amanda Nunes, announced her retirement.
“If anyone is worthy of that time of opportunity, it’s probably Ronda Rousey,” Anik said, per Jits Magazine. “And I do believe she would be competitive because she would not enter that setting without the guarantee that she would be competitive.” Rousey has not indicated that she is returning to UFC. But Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer said that the former Raw and SmackDown Women’s Champion is expected to leave soon, which is why she and her tag team partner Shayna Baszler lost the Women’s Tag Team Championship to Raquel Rodriguez and Liv Morgan at Money in the Bank on Saturday, Rousey is expected to face Baszler in a match soon.
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“This was always, always, always the plan,” Meltzer said. “It kept getting delayed and then Ronda got hurt and the thing was – and I don’t know the date, and it might be SummerSlam, it might be a little bit after – the deal is that Ronda has a hard out. She gave a date, ‘This is my last date.’ Cause I remember talking to somebody there and it’s like, ‘I know they’re going to do this, and I guess, make the big match for WrestleMania.’ And it’s like, ‘No, her hard out is…’ – they didn’t give me the date but it’s long before WrestleMania.”
Rousey’s last MMA match was against Nunes at UFC 207 in 2016. It was her second loss in her career, and Nunes defeated Rousey in the first round via TKO. At the time, Nunes was the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion, a title Rousey won in 2012 and held on to it until November 2015 when she lost to Holly Holm.
Last year, Rousey spoke to Daniel Cormier about the one mistake she made while competing in UFC. “I think that’s a mistake that I made with MMA was when I got to that point where I didn’t want it anymore, I kept doing it for everybody else,” she said, per Jits Magazine. “I think to be at that top level, you kind of have to be a people-pleaser. You want to please your coach, you want to please your parents, you want to please everybody watching. It’s one of the things that make you excel, but it’s one of those things that… it can be an obstacle a lot of times.”
