On Friday night, Ronda Rousey made her long awaited return to the world of MMA by making an appearance at the UFC 205 weigh-ins at Madison Square Garden. Before then, the only media she’d done since her December 30th fight with Amanda Nunes was announced was a guest spot on Ellen, so people were pretty excited to see what Rousey might say.
Unfortunately, the Rowdy one didn’t actually end up speaking. After facing off with the current women’s bantamweight champion, Rousey made an abrupt exit, storming off the stage rather than staying to be interviewed by Joe Rogan. She even went so far as to pull her arm free from UFC president Dana White’s grasp when he tried to stop her.
At the UFC 205 post event press conference, White explained what that was all about and boiled it down to a mix-up with the production crew.
“First of all, she was never supposed to speak, and neither was Amanda [Nunes],” White said. “My production guys screwed that thing up. It made Ronda look bad, like she just stormed off and didn’t do an interview … they’re not supposed to do an interview. They were supposed to go up there, square off, and they were both supposed to walk away.”
“What I was doing … so they squared off, and then I was getting them to face forward and I was waiting for someone to bring in the belt, to put the belt so you guys can take the pictures of them moving forward. And I turn around and Rogan’s interviewing [Nunes]. We’re not perfect all the time. Actually, our team, coming into this big event, we made a lot of mistakes at this event that I’m not happy about. Not stuff that you’d notice, but I try to be perfect. But it didn’t work out.”
But what about the strange silence from Ronda that only seemed more apparent with this latest wordless appearance? Does it have to do with her feeling that the media ‘turned on her’ after her loss?
“Ronda? Ronda’s been talking,” White said dismissively. “She was on Ellen. She’s doing Kimmel. She’s doing all the talk shows.”
“Is she gonna talk to you guys?” he asked rhetorically with a laugh. “I dunno.”