Since losing to Holly Holm at UFC 193 in November, Ronda Rousey said she’s been trying to keep a low profile.
Despite making some public appearances—hosting Saturday Night Live and appearing on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show, to name a couple—the former UFC women’s bantamweight champion has tried to stay away from the limelight.
“To be honest, I’ve been trying to disappear as much as possible,” Rousey said, per Brent Brookhouse and Justin Park of MMAJunkie.com. “I don’t look at articles, I don’t look at tags, I don’t look at comments. People on the Internet are mostly evil, and I don’t want to accept any of that negativity.”
The former champion also said she has stayed away from social media since losing to Holm on Nov. 15 in Melbourne, Australia, her first MMA loss. Rousey, who has nearly 2.2 million followers on Twitter and 7.5 million more on Instagram, explained why she has not been as active on either of her accounts since the defeat:
People are really cruel with that access. I don’t want to allow them that access to me anymore because they really take it for granted and they don’t look at you like a person, you’re an event to them. I don’t want want to read people saying all the worst things they can imagine about me every single day. … I never used social media until it was to help me with work; until I was hustling and trying to get people to catch on to this whole women’s MMA thing. It’s only been something for work for me.
Rousey had been keeping to herself since that mid-November night in Australia until this past week. After appearing on DeGeneres’ show, she also appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, telling Fallon that she plans to fight Holm again in the future (via Heidi Parker of the Daily Mail).
As for when she’ll be back in the Octagon, that’s still an uncertainty. Rousey said she plans to continue keeping a low profile until she feels ready to come back.
“I’m being purposely mysterious right now because I think people have taken my availability for granted,” Rousey said, per Brookhouse and Park. “I’m kind of just wanting to disappear. Everyone is constantly keeping me under a microscope and I just kind of want to be left alone right now.”
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