(This glorious occasion calls for only the most glorious of gifs, so take it away, Howard Dean.)
So recently, The New Yorker ran a profile on women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, entitled, “Mean Girl: Why the world’s best female fighter loves to be hated.” Among the topics covered were Rousey’s weight-cutting routine/diet, her rise to prominence in MMA, her budding film career, and her infamous snubbing of Miesha Tate following their rematch at UFC 168. It hit on most of the notes we’ve come to expect in an article about Rousey — she’s confident bordering on crazy, she’s both beauty and the beast (#nailedit), etc. — but perhaps most interesting about The New Yorker’s profile of Rousey was the sources that the author, Kelefa Sanneh, chose to reference.
Being the classy publication that The New Yorker is, one might assume that they would pull their quotes about Rousey from respected, credentialed members of the MMA media, like Old Dad or Ariel Helwani, or better yet, forgo the cheap, bottom-barrel ramblings of online media in general to quote something from the actual printed press, right?
HAHA NOPE THEY ONLY QUOTED US. (*phones D. White, tells him to bite my bird*)
The above selection, taken from the second paragraph of the piece (a highly underrated paragraph in any article, IMO), quotes not only our Hot Potato gallery of Rousey from back in 2011, but this article published just last May. Checkmate, other MMA blogs. Check. Mate.
Let it be written that on this day, validation was spelled C-A-G-E-P-O-T-A-T-O.
Another interesting moment from The New Yorker’s profile of Rousey came when the Olympic judoka was asked to speak on the subject of fighter pay, a topic that she largely has been able to avoid thus far in her UFC career. Since signing with the UFC, Rousey has made around 60k/60k per fight, which, while being leagues above most of her female counterparts, doesn’t exactly reflect that she is “the biggest star” the UFC has ever had.
According to Rousey, however, her current pay rate is nothing worth complaining about at all, because she’ll just continue kicking ass until that figure rises exponentially.
I’m not going to throw a fit over a little bit of money now, when I feel like letting that slide and just putting out good performances will pay off way more in the future.
It should be noted that the UFC bought Rousey a BMW X6 M (or roughly one and a half Jon Fitchs) upon signing her, which is a bonus not likely doled out to 99.9% of their roster.
A few other takeaways:
– Rousey was choked out by her umbilical cord during birth, which “deprived her of oxygen long enough to damage her brain,” and didn’t speak her first full sentence until the age of six.
– Rousey once fractured her Mom’s wrist during a workout. AnnMaria didn’t inform her of this until years later, after they had stopped training together.
– Rousey considered training for the 2012 Games, but eventually came to the conclusion that “four years of misery” wasn’t worth “ten grand and a handshake.” YEAH, AND ALL THE PRIMO, MIND-BLOWING SEX YOU CAN HAVE.
– While in Dublin for Fight Night 46, Dana White declared that Rousey is “the greatest athlete I’ve ever worked with on every level.” His decision to add “because fuck GSP” was later stricken from the record (not really, but he all but said it with that quote).
So Nation, is this our greatest moment since being plugged on FX’s “Lights Out”? Does it signal that a forced apology from Dana White is surely on the way, along with the righteous restoration of our press credentials? Probably not, but stay tuned to find out!