
Ronda Rousey is planning to change the entire sport of mixed martial arts after her comeback fight.
The former UFC women’s bantamweight champion will enter the cage on May 16 for the first time in almost a decade, as she headlines the first MMA event on Netflix.
Rousey will fight fellow pioneer Gina Carano on a card that also features long-awaited returns for Francis Ngannou and Nate Diaz.
It’s expected that Saturday’s main event will mark ‘Rowdy’s’ final fight, but that does not mean she plans to fade away from the forefront of MMA.
The 39-year-old has not held back about her former employer, targeting the UFC over its contracts and criticizing Hunter Campbell’s role in the company.
Rousey plans to become MMA’s new ‘Dana White’ under the Most Valuable Promotions banner, believing she is much more qualified than Campbell to fill those boots in the sport.
If Saturday’s event is a success and paves the way for her to become a powerful figure at the helm of MVP MMA, Rousey is planning some radical changes.
“The point should be great fights,” Rousey told Sibley Scoles on ALL THE SMOKE FIGHT. “Who really cares about a title?
“I would love to do through MVP — if we continued to do this — is make every single person at home a matchmaker. What fight do you want to see next? Who do you think would match up great? Put on great fights for the sake of great fights.
“Titles and belts are almost constricting or they force fights that aren’t really great matchups. It should be about the fight itself,” she added.
“The future of the sport is not titles or brands. It’s these showcase fights. When you see people that are characters that stand out, that know how to captivate people, that’s something that needs to be nourished.”
It’s not just competitive alterations that ‘Rowdy’ has planned for MMA.
She also pitched the structure for a fighters’ pension fund and the implementation of health insurance during an appearance on Monday’s episode of The Ariel Helwani Show.
“If I was calling the shots, I would say, ‘Hey, let’s take a dollar from every ticket sale and put it towards a pension fund. Hey, every time someone fights for us, let’s give them health insurance for the next year. And if they’re fighting for us continuously, then they continue having health insurance.’
“I can enact the kind of changes that I would want to see a union do from the inside. From being in a position to be able to make those decisions.
“A union is a lot of work, and fighters are very conflict-oriented, you know what I mean? I feel like these things like the PI and the super gyms, it’s kind of fracturing the family around the fighters,” she added.
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