Ronda Rousey Praises WWE Fans While Taking a Shot at UFC Fans
Ronda Rousey made her name in the combat sports world as the inaugural UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion and eventually as the first female inductee into the UFC Hall of Fame. But she showed some contempt for the UFC fans during a recent gaming stream when asked to compare them with WWE fans. Rousey officially arrived in WWE in 2018 and has since competed at three WrestleManias and has won both the Raw and SmackDown Women's Championships.
"I would say that the WWE fans care more about the wrestlers than the UFC fans care more about the fighters. UFC fans have much less respect for the veterans and legends of the sport than WWE fans do," Rousey said. "A lot of UFC fans are kind of like bandwagon fans in that way. The second you're not on top, you're dead to them. Where WWE fans are like, 'this is the guy that did this 20 years ago' and are still really excited whereas UFC fans now are like, 'Forrest Griffin sucks.' Uhh, you owe basically the whole sport to him. S— like that. 'Anderson Silva sucks. GSP [Georges St-Pierre] sucks.' These are people that elevated the sport and paved the way for everybody else. I don't see UFC fans having the same respect for people that got the sport to where it is as WWE fans. I'm not saying it's completely absent, I'm just saying I see more respect for legends in WWE fans than UFC fans. There are exceptions to everything,"
Rousey has previously criticized WWE fans in interviews, though she claimed she was attempting to portray a heel character at the time. It was the fans' positive reaction to her return from hiatus at the Royal Rumble earlier this year that quickly turned her face, though her ongoing feud with Liv Morgan has officially switched her to the heel side.
"I guess the feedback I get is a live audience," Rousey said on the Wives of Wrestling Podcast earlier this year. "There's a lot of times where what you think is coming online and what the live audience is expressing are two opposite things. Case in point, Royal Rumble, I left as a heel and was getting booed out of every stadium, and I was like, 'okay, so I assumed everyone thought I was still a heel.' And any interviews I gave any time I was talking — on the fans. Like, being in character for in case I come back, and that's what I assumed I would come back to. When it ended up being not that reaction, I was really, really surprised."