Ronda Rousey publicly responded for the first time to comments Demetrious Johnson made about her nearly nine years ago, calling him out on Instagram ahead of her comeback fight.
In May 2017, during a Q&A with Sports Illustrated, Johnson was asked about handling potential disappointment and brought up Rousey unprompted.
“You look at Ronda Rousey. You got your ass beat, grow the fck up. It happens. It’s mixed martial arts. I don’t want to be like that. If I lose, I’ll be like, ‘I lost.’ Everybody fcking loses. It’s part of the sport. Grow up. Look, Ronda, you lost two fcking fights in a row, and you made more fcking money than the women’s roster. You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Rousey had never publicly addressed the remarks until this week. In a video posted by All the Smoke on Instagram on Wednesday, she was asked about Johnson while discussing her upcoming fight against Gina Carano.
“Fck you, DJ, OK? I was totally cool about you, and I put you over, and you were being — you said some nasty ass sht about me.”
Rousey has not competed since her 48-second TKO loss to Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 in December 2016. She returns to MMA on Saturday when she faces Carano in the Netflix debut of MVP MMA at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California.
Johnson went on to break Anderson Silva’s record with his 11th consecutive flyweight title defense before losing the belt to Henry Cejudo. He was later traded to ONE Championship in exchange for Ben Askren.