Holly Holm has gotten her wish to return to the cage as quickly as possible regardless of what Ronda Rousey is up to. That’s fortunate for her considering Rousey seems unwilling to put a timeline on her return other than ‘sometime in 2016.’ If there was even a small possibility that sometime might have been by UFC 200 in July, we wouldn’t be seeing Holm fight Miesha Tate at UFC 197. So it’s a safe bet Ronda’s return will be closer to the end of 2016 than the middle.
Not that Holly Holm cares. Considering the fight is worth an estimated 7 million plus dollars to her, she’s pretty blase about the whole thing. Here’s what she said during this week’s UFC 197 press conference (via Fox Sports):
“For me I want to keep fighting and if Ronda wants to come back and that’s her passion — great. If she wants to stay in movies — great,” Holm said on Wednesday.
“I think that I would rather meet someone in the cage when they’re passionate about it. I don’t want it to be because they feel like they have to or it’s expected or other people are curious about it. It’s Ronda’s life, I want her to do what she wants to do.”
Maybe her laissez-faire attitude towards it all comes from the fact that she’s dealt with this before: she never ended up fighting Laila Ali back when she was a boxer, and had to deal with endless prodding and questions regarding the match that never was.
“In my whole boxing career, Laila Ali kind of ended short of what a lot of people thought. They always used to ask me, ‘What do you think about that? I think that she should stick around and prove this and prove that.’ Well, if she doesn’t want to fight, I don’t want to watch her fight,” Holm said. “I don’t want to watch a fighter doing it that’s not passionate about it.
“So if Ronda wants to fight, awesome. If she wants to go onto different avenues of her life, great, whatever.”
Damn, Holly. That’s a pretty zen answer right there. If this was Ronda talking, she’d probably cook up some new expletive based catchphrase for chickensh*ts that don’t step up. Meanwhile, it’s gonna take news outlets some serious chutzpah to twist Holm’s “whatever” response into a heated dig against the former champ. If anything, Holly seems to wish the best for Rousey!
Respect, admiration, and well wishes for her opponents both past and present. How the hell is the UFC supposed to sell that? Fortunately they’ve got Conor McGregor on the same card threatening to behead Rafael Dos Anjos and drag his head through the streets of Brazil. And if the people who tune in to see that get to witness another massive headkick knockout from Holm, perhaps her actions will speak louder than words in the promotion of future fights.
