In an appearance Wednesday night on Jimmy Kimmel live, Ronda Rousey said that challenger Bethe Correia will look different coming out of the fight than she did coming into their fight on Aug. 1 in Rio de Janeiro.
Ronda Rousey’s last UFC fight would be almost impossible to duplicate. And coming off her last two title defenses last a total of 30 seconds, she said on an appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show not to expect a repeat performance.
The reason? She doesn’t like Bethe Correia (9-0), her opponent in her UFC women’s bantamweight title defense that headlines the UFC 190 pay-per-view on Aug. 1 in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil. She contrasted Correia to her last opponent, Cat Zingano, who Rousey did a unique armbar submission to beat in 14 seconds on Feb. 28.
“I really liked her,” Rousey (11-0, with ten wins in the first round, eight in less than 66 seconds) said about Zingano. “She’s one of the girls I had a lot of respect for. After the fight I told her we can do this again.”
“If I make the fight quick, that means I like you,” she said. “She got to go home with a payment to buy a house. She had a great night.”
“With this next chick (Correia) that I don’t like, that’s going to look a lot different. She’s walking out looking different than she did walking in.”
“I’m going to make sure this chick remembers every single second of that fight.”
Rousey will be fighting for the first time outside the U.S., but she has fond memories of Brazil from her days in judo, including one of her most memorable battles.
The discussion on the Kimmel show at what point ventured to the movie Rocky IV, where the American champion, Rocky, went to Russia in front of a hostile audience to fight their national hero, Ivan Drago. Even though Rousey has been heavily complimentary of Brazil in the buildup, the reality is that on the day of the show, they are likely to favor the fighter from their own country.
She noted that in the movie, when Rocky came out, he didn’t like the Russian fans, so this is a different story. She also said if she won, she probably wouldn’t be making a Rocky speech to the crowd.
“I love the Brazilian crowds,” she said. “They booed me out of the stadium, chanted `You’re gonna die,’ in Portuguese, but they’ve also been the only crowd to cheer for me. In the semifinals of the world championships (in judo) in 2007, I was fighting the defending world champion. She was like 7 feet tall. I looked like a hobbit next to her. She dislocated my arm. I popped it back in. I was behind with 20 seconds left. I threw her with the arm I popped back in. Everyone was cheering. It didn’t matter I wasn’t Brazilian or anything like that. It mattered that they saw something great and I loved that crowd.”
In actuality, the match in question, at the Olympic Gym in Rio de Janeiro, was with Edith Bosch of Holland, who was 6-feet-tall and had won the world championship in 2005. Rousey threw her to win the match with 20 seconds left. Rousey, who was 20 at the time, won the silver medal at 154 pounds , the only American to medal that year.
“I fight above myself in Brazil,” she said. “I do really well there. I want to beat her in the most devastatingly embarrassingly way possible. I’m not afraid to let go of my home town advantage. She’s much more than a home town advantage away from beating me.”