For all of her bluster, it generally takes special circumstances to bring the nastiness out of Ronda Rousey.
You know what I mean, of course. Rousey is competitive with all of her opponents, and she makes her media rounds and talks about how she’s going to beat them because she’s the best in the world and all that. But the fire comes out when there’s some kind of real dislike. We’ve only really seen it with Miesha Tate and Bethe Correia. We have, of course, seen it with Cris “Cyborg” Justino, and she isn’t even an opponent. Yet.
But for the most part, Rousey is respectful to her opponents, provided they afford her the same measure of respect. And until Friday afternoon’s weigh-ins in Melbourne, that’s exactly how things had gone down with Holly Holm, the opponent Rousey faces tomorrow at UFC 193.
Having spent time with Holm for a story in 2014, I can tell you one thing I know for sure: She’s nice. She just is. She’s quiet and humble and just all-around sweet. In fact, I’d say that’s the first impression she leaves on you when you meet her for the first time. And so anyone expecting her to go into the lead-up to this fight with Rousey and instantly turn into someone she’s not—even if it’s for the purpose of building up the fight—well, they were sorely mistaken.
And, again: things were amicable. Until today, when all hell broke loose. Or at least appeared to.
You know the deal. Holm weighed in at 134 pounds, then waited for Rousey to do the same. After the champ weighed in, she walked right over and got in Holm’s face. Holm stood her ground and put her first in Rousey’s face.
And this is where things got a little weird and heated.
Rousey appeared to not take very kindly to Holm touching her face with her fist, jerking Holm’s hand away. Dana White stepped in with that look on his face that says “I’m really supposed to be pretending this is bad but oh man this is great.” The two fighters stared at each other and backed away.
After, when Rogan was interviewing Rousey, she cut a promo straight out of World Wrestling Entertainment.
I just wanted to get in her face and show her that I was there for a reason. She’s the one that put the fist on my face. I didn’t touch her. She’s the one that touched me and I told her that fake, sweet act, I can see right through it. I really do. It was all fake. All until now. All that respect, all that everything, all being sweet. I see right now that it’s fake and you’re gonna get it on Sunday.
You’re not the first person that thought that you had the perfect plan to beat me. It’s not the first time that your camp thought they had the perfect plan to beat me. I’m gonna show you on Sunday why I’m the champ.
After, Rousey told the Fox Sports 1 post-fight television show that she felt Holm was the instigator.
“I just wanted to place my hand on the outside. That was it. I could tell she got really frustrated and didn’t like that and actually put her fist on my face,” she said. “I didn’t really think that was called for at all.”
And just like that, a fight that had very little going for it in the way of story lines—outside of the usual “how fast will Rousey win this time” bit, of course—suddenly has some drama heading into Saturday. Rousey virtually guaranteed that the weigh-in clip will be repeatedly shown on ESPN and other outlets. The scuffle probably added a ton of late pay per view buys and piqued the interest of some folks who were considering skipping tomorrow night’s card.
Was it real? I have my doubts. I’m not telling you that Rousey and Holm huddled together behind the curtain and worked the whole thing up. But would it really surprise you if that were actually the case? I mean, how many times have we been duped into believing that Fighter A absolutely hates Fighter B, only to find out after the fight that they were just trying to hook us into opening up our wallets?
It has happened more times than I can remember. And Rousey is a very smart promoter of her own fans, not to mention a huge pro wrestling fan. Even if Holm wasn’t involved, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find out that Rousey decided to spice things up a bit and add in some last-minute interest by creating drama where it doesn’t exist and then cutting a wrestling-style promo.
Either way, Saturday night just got a lot more interesting.
Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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