Kayla Harrison has no interest in grading Ronda Rousey’s comeback on a curve. Speaking with Ariel Helwani, the UFC bantamweight champion said the most impressive part of Rousey’s return was the selling. She called the fight itself something else.
“I’m impressed with the ability that Ronda has to convince the world of absolute bulls and then get paid royally for it. I am impressed by that,” Harrison said.
Asked whether she still wanted to see Rousey compete at a high level, Harrison didn’t accept the premise. “I don’t think it’s a high level,” she said. “I don’t think you can call it that. I think that she creates the (competition) market, and she does a damn good job of it.” She added a line Sportskeeda put right in its headline: “I wish I could spin bulls**t the way she does.”
The fight in question was Rousey’s return to MMA earlier this year after more than a decade away. She headlined an MVP MMA card against Gina Carano at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, on a Netflix broadcast. She needed 17 seconds to finish it with an armbar. Carano hadn’t competed in nearly 17 years. The business side landed far better than the matchmaking. The event reportedly drew $2.2 million in live gate, with 15,795 fans in the building, and Rousey spent part of the promotional run taking shots at the UFC for not backing the fight. Back in March, Rousey and Carano posed with Jake Paul at a press conference at the same arena to promote the May 16 date.
Harrison, 36, has been circling Rousey, 39, for a while. On the Deep Waters podcast, Dustin Poirier, Jorge Masvidal and Chris Weidman asked her how a meeting of the two in their primes would have gone. Weidman pushed back on Rousey’s behalf. “She had a sick armbar, though. Her armbars were ridiculous, though, come on,” he said. Harrison, who shares a judo background with Rousey, waved it off. “We learned the armbar at the same gym together. You think she’s gonna armbar me? Oh my goodness, don’t be disrespectful now, okay?”
She also questioned the depth of Rousey’s early opposition, while giving her credit for opening the door. “Yes, she dominated women who picked up gloves three years ago at a cardio kickboxing class and said, ‘I think I’m gonna try this.’ Like, yeah, 100%, she paved the way; I’m standing on her shoulders, and for that I’m grateful,” Harrison said.
The record backs up both halves of that. Rousey won her first eight pro fights by armbar, most of them in the first round. Then Holly Holm knocked her out at UFC 193, and Amanda Nunes did the same at UFC 207. Harrison, a two-time Olympic judo gold medalist, joined Henry Cejudo in the small club of Olympic champions who’ve also held UFC gold. Rousey, for her part, has called the Carano bout a one-off and said she wants to go back to private life and her family. So the argument stays verbal.
Harrison’s real business is Nunes, the woman who ended Rousey’s run, at UFC 334 on November 14. It’s her first fight back after neck surgery. That’s the sharpest edge of all this to me. Harrison is talking about who Rousey beat and whether it counts, and four weeks from now she walks into the cage with the one opponent nobody can accuse of picking up gloves at a cardio kickboxing class. If she wins, she earns the right to talk about levels. If she loses, Rousey won’t need to say a word.
