Undefeated UFC Bantamweight Champion “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey sat down with Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts to discuss, among other things, the current push to get mixed martial arts legalized in New York. To the sentiment that MMA is too violent of a sport, Rousey said:
“There are so many ridiculous arguments that MMA is somehow anti-woman. Fighting’s not a man’s thing, it’s a human thing. To say it’s anti-woman, is, I think, an anti-feminist statement. In the UFC, I mean, I’m the biggest draw in the sport, and I’m a woman! How is that anti-woman.”
She also added:
“I’m a two-time Olympian, Olympic medalist, and when I was doing judo, the exact same things I really apply in MMA, I was celebrated as an American hero. Somehow, when I do it for money, I’m a barbarian?”
Rousey also spoke about MMA influencing how women are treated in pop culture. In terms of UFC directly helping the cause, Ronda pointed out:
“Just this last weekend, women were introduced walking to the Octagon not as women’s bantamweights, they were just bantamweights. They don’t say men’s bantamweights, they don’t say MMMA for men’s MMA, so they took all the women out of it. They were just introduced as fighters, and that’s it. It’s the first sport in the world to do that.”
I won’t dispute that mixed martial arts is helping to move past the image of women being frail, most of that goodwill is shattered when Dana White says Cris Cyborg looks like “Wanderlei Silva in a dress.”
