It’s the hot new trend in Hollywood to tab mixed martial artists for your movies. Ronda Rousey was in The Expendables, Entourage, and Furious 7, while Gina Carano showed up in Deadpool. Conor McGregor was supposed to be in the new Vin Diesel XXX sequel, but pulled out to concentrate on his rematch with Nate Diaz. Michael Bisping ended up replacing McGregor in that film.
So if you’re a hot MMA fighter, there’s a good chance Hollywood wants you. That’s apparently the case with Holly Holm, the woman who gained international fame for kicking Ronda Rousey’s head in last November. While she went ahead and got representation through APA to handle all the non-fight career stuff, she’s not accepting any movie roles. According to TMZ Sports, she turned down a “huge movie” from a “major movie studio” to concentrate on her July 23 fight against Valentina Shevchenko.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, too. According to her fight rep Lenny Fresquez, she’s gotten “an unbelievable amount of calls.” He told TMZ Sports. “She’s focused on fighting. We don’t want to make the same mistakes that somebody else made.”
Hmm, we wonder who he’s referring to *cough* Ronda *cough*. But managers in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
After taking the women’s bantamweight belt off Rousey, Fresquez and Holm pushed the UFC for a title defense against Miesha Tate. The UFC wanted Holm to wait until UFC 200, but they insisted on fighting again sooner. We know how that turned out: Tate took the belt off Holm and is now the champ. She’ll defend her championship at UFC 200 and is set to make a lot of money now that Brock Lesnar’s return will push PPV buys into the stratosphere.
So good for Lenny Fresquez, avoiding the mistakes of others. Now he just has to avoid making more of his own.