‘Biggest MMA fight of all-time’: Ronda Rousey erupts in wild rant at Kayla Harrison during comeback press conference | International Sports News
Ronda Rousey was back in front of cameras to promote her comeback fight against Gina Carano on May 16, but the moment Kayla Harrison came up, she went straight at her, turning the press conference into an extended, expletive-filled rant that quickly took over the room. At the core of it is a back-and-forth that did not start on that stage. Harrison, the current UFC women’s bantamweight champion and a two-time Olympic gold medallist in judo, had recently dismissed Rousey as “irrelevant,” a comment that landed differently given Rousey’s role in shaping the division Harrison now fights in. That remark, along with a separate accusation that Rousey had exaggerated parts of her judo training history, is what she was responding to when she went off.
Where the tension comes from
The friction between the two sits on a few overlapping lines. There is the generational piece, with Rousey seen as the figure who helped bring women’s MMA into the mainstream during her time as champion, and Harrison representing the current era, holding the title Rousey once defined. There is also the question of credibility. Harrison had publicly challenged Rousey’s account of her time training in judo in Canada in 2006, saying: “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.’ Dude, that is literally a blatant f****** lie. Now you’re just making s*** up. That never happened.”Those comments, paired with the “irrelevant” jab, set things in motion before Rousey could respond in person.
Rousey’s response at the press conference
When she did respond, it came all at once rather than in parts, moving from Harrison’s comments to the broader question of legacy and relevance. “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 said, before turning directly to Harrison. “Kayla is so irrelevant that she couldn’t even keep the 145-pound division around.” She stayed on that line, not separating the personal from the professional, adding, “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.” The criticism did not stop at personality. Rousey tied it back to what she sees as the structure of the sport itself, telling Harrison, “So the next time she wants to talk s***, 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.”
The dispute over Harrison’s upcoming fight
Harrison had originally been scheduled to defend her title against Amanda Nunes on January 24 before the fight was postponed due to a neck injury, and when it was reworked for UFC 324, it was still being promoted as one of the biggest fights in women’s MMA despite being placed in the co-main event slot beneath an interim lightweight title fight. Rousey went straight at that, saying, “Her and Hunter [Campbell] acting like her next upcoming fight is the biggest women’s fight of all time. Then why is it being booked as a co-main for a men’s interim title fight?”“The b**** isn’t even bigger than Paddy ‘The Baddy’. No offense to Paddy. He’s got more potential than anybody in the UFC, and he should call me when his contract runs out.” From there, the argument shifted to pay and scale. “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? So riddle me this, b****, are you overvalued or are you overpaid?”
The judo accusation and Rousey’s reply
The exchange over judo training, which had started separately, was folded back into the same response. “[Harrison] says that I lied about training in judo in Canada in 2006. Who the f**** are you to call me a liar?” Rousey said. “I was training there for five months. B***, you weren’t even there.” She framed that as part of how she sees her own public record, adding, “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.” The remark led her into a reference Harrison had made previously about their past, where Harrison had said she would not speak badly about Rousey because of how Rousey had supported her earlier in her career.“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*** up and eat your groceries?”
Rousey’s broader claim about her own fight
Even as the focus stayed on Harrison, Rousey kept returning to the fight she is stepping into against Gina Carano, placing it above the matchup Harrison had been preparing for. “What really pisses me off more than anything else is how small she thinks,” she said. “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****** ass this is the biggest MMA fight of all time. Bar none.”
