UFC 176 is less than a month away and with the removal of headliner Jose Aldo from the card due to injury, there’s currently no main event in place.
Perhaps that’s why someone on the UFC’s production team asked UFC commentator Joe Rogan to ask the victorious UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey if she’d be interested in competing on the card. After all, Rousey seemingly got through her co-main event bout at UFC 175 unscathed, blasting through challenger Alexis Davis in a mere 16 seconds.
“If they needed me to step up, I would do it,” Rousey said post-fight when asked. However, the champion also noted she was already scheduled to get knee surgery, something she had planned to reveal at the post-fight press conference. While Rousey didn’t say no, she couldn’t quite say yes, either. “I would appreciate the rest, but if they really needed me to do it, they know I would do it.”
Before the camera could cut away, a visibly angry UFC President Dana White could be seen talking to Rogan, presumbly in anger over the commentator’s question. As it turns out, White wasn’t upset with Rogan, but the UFC’s in-house production team.
“I wasn’t upset with Joe Rogan,” White said at the post-fight press conference. “I was upset with the truck telling him to tell Ronda that she’s going to fight again. That wasn’t true. That was some s–t that somebody made up back there.
“It was the biggest idiotic move in the history of our production team.”
White declined to speculate on what would happen with Rousey or the entire UFC 176 event, but was adamant that putting Rousey on the uncomfortable hot seat is not something he directed anyone to do.
“I told them right up there that’s not true,” White said of Rousey and Rogan in the cage. “I don’t know where that came from. Nobody told anybody to say that.”