Rousey: They made me fit the villain role
Days before TUF 18 debuted on FOX Sports 1, Ronda Rousey conducted an interview with MMAJunkie, in which she expressed concerns…
Days before TUF 18 debuted on FOX Sports 1, Ronda Rousey conducted an interview with MMAJunkie, in which she expressed concerns that she did not come across well in the reality television series.
“I think it was very good for the women’s division, and I think it definitely needed to happen,” said Rousey. “But you couldn’t pay me $10 million to do it again.”
“How could people possibly know who you are from a couple of clips of a video that people are seeing out of context? That’s no way for people to get to know you, so I’m just preparing for people to get the worst idea of who I am.”
The season did indeed cast Rousey in a dim light on numerous occasions. And the passing of time has done nothing to dim Rousey’s feelings about the experience. At a luncheon with reporters at the JW Marriot hotel in downtown LA, Rousey discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly.
“Rowdy” said that the show was good for WMMA, good for Miesha Tate, and good for the cast members.
“The 115-pound girls, man, they’re badasses, there are bound to be some problems as they go along,” said Rousey of the all-female strawweight TUF 20. “It’s really encouraging that they’re adding them, it shows that what we’ve done has made a difference.”
“If you think The Ultimate Fighter was the best opportunity for me at the time, you’re wrong. It needed to be done for those girls and it needed to be done for the division and they benefited from it.”
“For Miesha it was the best opportunity at the time. It was really important for her to come off well because that was her moment to do so. So I’m like, look, I need to make sure that everyone sees this, I don’t need to come across like everybody loves me, so sure, it doesn’t matter to me, I can roll with this one, but I needed these girls to do well. … These kids are my kids for the long run and I would be absolutely shocked if Miesha even knew where her kids are today.”
Speaking for herself however, Rousey was blunt.
“The experience sucked,” she said. “It wasn’t the perception. Yeah, they needed a villain and they made me fit the role and that’s fine. I wasn’t purposely going out of my way on the set to make these things happen. In hindsight it was a s— experience and it came out terrible for me.”
“We were really mistreated and disrespected by the whole production staff. And everybody was going out of their way to get the most dramatic response possible.”
Rousey’s displeasure extended as well to the members of Team Tate.
“They’re like ‘we fear for our safety, they’re going to hurt us. They’re like these little b— kids in the classroom making nicey-nicey with the teacher, and then instigating with the other kids as soon as they turn around. They’re being b— when the camera was off, then she was like, ‘we’re such victims’ when the cameras were on.”
So will Rousey ever watch the show?
“It sucked when I was on the set,” she said. “Why would I want to see an even s—-ier version of it?”
Ronda Rousey fights Miesha Tate in the co main event of UFC 168, on December 28, live on PPV.
