Ronda Rousey has delivered one of her sharpest critiques of the UFC’s current direction, arguing that the promotion under TKO has made a strategic miscalculation by trying to make the brand the star rather than the fighters inside it.
Speaking with Complex News ahead of her May 16 return on Netflix, Rousey laid out what she sees as the root cause of the UFC’s current position.
“They don’t want that star power anymore. They want the brand to be the star. And that’s why they stopped naming the fight cards and started giving them numbers. That’s why they started putting everybody in a uniform and trying to stamp out their individuality. They want people to watch the brand. And that’s why when you have big stars like Nate Diaz and Francis Ngannou knowing their worth and demanding more, they’re telling them to go kick rocks instead of paying them what they’re worth because they think they’re too big to fail.”
She cited the most-watched combat sports event in history as the most compelling counter-argument to the UFC’s approach.
“They don’t tune in to watch a belt. They don’t tune in to watch a brand. They tune in to watch two fighters. And that’s what Tyson versus Paul proved. This is the most viewed combat sports event of all time. 108 million live views. And it’s not for a belt. It’s not for two people at the very top of the sport. It’s for two characters that resonate with people. They want to see the conclusion of the story that they have been telling. That’s something that the UFC has lost sight of and something that I’m looking to bring back.”
Rousey also drew a clear distinction between her loyalty to the people who built the UFC and the organization those people have since sold.
“I absolutely love Dana and the Fertittas, but my loyalty is to them, not to the company that they sold, and also a company that I helped build. It’s outside of his control now and it’s outside of my control now. It’s not that company anymore, but I can affect the entire industry in this way.”
She also argued that fighters now have more leverage than many realize at the end of their UFC contracts.
“UFC puts people in very long contracts. They’ll put you in a set-and-fight contract that’s for seven years or something. Jon Jones is kind of trapped. A lot of people are trapped in that contract. But I think what we’ve done here is we’ve made people realize that there is another option and you can fight out your contract all the way to the end and actually have leverage to negotiate for more.”