How would Ronda Rousey do against a male bantamweight? It’s a question the women’s 135 lb champion has been getting a lot lately. Partially because it’s a topic that UFC figures like Dana White and Joe Rogan have been pushing for years in public interviews, partially because she herself has been willing to entertain the idea, telling reporters that she could beat Cain Velasquez “under the right circumstances,” and partially because it’s a common point of discussion for almost any woman athlete who achieves crushing dominance in her sport. At this point though, it appears to be a topic that Ronda is not interested in.
She recently appeared on the Doug Gottlieb show, on CBS Sports Radio, where he posed the question of the day: How close is the UFC to making a fight between Ronda Rousey and one of their bantamweight men? Here’s what Ronda had to say (transcription via MMAFighting):
“It’s not a reality,” Rousey said. “They’re not gonna do anything like that. Fights are chaotic. Anything can happen. And there’s no setting in which we should condone a man hitting a woman.”
…
“I really just don’t think that any athletic commission on Earth would ever condone something like that,” Rousey said. “Fights are going to go both ways. You’re going to see both people hitting each other. I don’t think we should celebrate a man hitting a woman in any kind of setting.”
It’s the obvious answer, but with the rhetoric surrounding her recent victory over Cat Zingano, it’s easy to see why some people are still asking the question.
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