Are We Sure Ronda Rousey is Still Coming Back?

Sorry guys but I’ve got some bad news to share with you today. You may want to brace yourself, because this is a truly shocking revelation I’m about to lay on you:

Dana White lied about something.

I know. A man as powerful as DFW not being completely honest about his business with us, the fans and media who do nothing but criticize his decisions and ask for free tickets?

I’ll give you a few minutes to compose yourself…

So…how about that whole EpiPen thing…crazy right? It’s crazy. The whole world is crazy. All of it. The world. Crazy.

And Gene Wilder passed away. That sucks. Blazing Saddles is, without question, one of the greatest comedies of all time.

There’s no joke to that remark. I’m really bummed about it.

…are you good? Can we continue?

All right, so what did Dana say this time? Not much, other than the fact that Ronda Rousey, the matron saint of women’s MMA in the UFC and the whole reason Paige VanZant was able to kick a girl in the face on Saturday night, will more than likely not be fighting this year.

This dialogue regarding when Ronda, whose last Octagon appearance was her infamous knockout loss to Holly Holm last November, will return is becoming longer and vaguer as time goes on.

The original target for her return was UFC 200, or it was until that got taken off the table due to her filming commitments for the Roadhouse remake, which, apparently, is still a thing. Then, they started tying it to UFC 205, the promotion’s debut in New York, but that is now definitely not happening as, according to Dana this week, Ronda recently underwent surgery to heal a few nagging injuries.

The hope now is that she can be back by the UFC’s New Years show on December 30. If not that, then early next year. Or next summer. Or UFC 300.

Or never.

I’m not saying that Ronda Rousey is never going to fight again. I just haven’t seen much reason to think she wants to.

Sure, she can use the whole reasoning that she’s banged up right now so it’s not possible to make a return but, for someone who’s been as historically vocal as her when it comes to promoting herself and her fights, one would think she’d be making a lot more noise if she really was that interested in coming back in a few months.

Most of the talk over the last nine months about Ronda’s return hasn’t come from Ronda. All we’ve really gotten from her is a TV commercial saying she’s “…okay with not being perfect,” just like I’m sure she’s okay with filming commercials where she’s half naked but doesn’t have to get kicked in the head and embarrassed in front of the entire world, and a TV interview when she said she felt suicidal after the loss and wants to make Travis Browne babies.

Yeah, that sounds like someone who’s mentally stable enough to return to cagefighting.

Hey, maybe Hapa is factoring into this more than it seems. I mean, she did have to fight off a pregnancy rumor last month, which came a few weeks after she had to watch her man get destroyed by Cain Velasquez at UFC 200, the card she could have been headlining.

Browne’s actually fighting again in a week-and-a-half, stepping in to face Fabricio Werdum at UFC 203 in a rematch of a fight he lost quite handily. If he gets beaten in that fight, should we expect a few months get added to the the Rousey Return Timetable (or RRT)?

It’s been hard to gauge if she actually wants to return because we’ve been given few indications that she honestly does. When Conor McGregor lost to Nate Diaz at UFC 196, he went back to the gym almost immediately and got to work as he waited for the rematch to get booked, which he knew would because he wanted it. He even turned down film roles and media obligations so he could focus on training for the rematch.

Has Ronda been preparing at all for a rematch with Holm? Many fight “experts” predicted it would take her a year of focused striking training to get to a point where she might be considered competitive with a former world boxing champion on the feet.

Now, I know nothing for certain (another major revelation…) but, if Ronda has spent most of the last year recovering from surgery and Roadhousing various things, that would make it seem like she hasn’t been putting the time in to make herself more of an all-round fighter and not just an aggressive judoka with heavy hands.

Who knows? Maybe she was excited to return to fighting at one point but that excitement has faded over time, especially since Holly Holm has lost twice since then and is not the appealing comeback fight she was before. That may have been the only fight that really interested her and could have been enough to entice her to return but, since Holly isn’t the top of the 135 lbs. mountain anymore (and neither is Ronda’s longtime rival Miesha Tate), there may be even less motivation for her to want to fight again than there was before.

Not that a fight between Ronda and current Women’s Bantamweight Champion Amanda Nunes wouldn’t be interesting but, no offense to Amanda, her name value isn’t high enough to create the kind of buzz and excitement a Ronda Rousey return should have behind it.

Well, unless Amanda goes on a tear and starts wrecking challengers left and right like Ronda did, but that means it will be even longer before The Rowdy One makes her return, and who knows how else the landscape will have changed by then.

Maybe the interest in a Ronda Rousey return fight will be gone by then. Maybe it’s gone already or, at the very least, it’s fading, and it will continue to fade the longer we go with no word from Ronda that she’s training and getting ready to come back.

Dana said this week that a Ronda return would generate a bigger Payperview buyrate than the McGregor-Diaz rematch, which, by all early indicators, has performed as well as it was predicted to.

Is Dana correct in his assumption? He certainly could be. Ronda’s return would definitely be a big piece of business if it happens, but, right now, all that can be discussed is a big IF.

The most we can hope for at this point is that, return or no return, one way or another, we get a real answer sooner than later.

I mean, CM Punk is actually about to fight. What’s Ronda’s excuse?

Evan Zivin has been writing for 411 MMA since May of 2013. Evan loves the sport, and likes to takes a lighthearted look at the world of MMA in his writing…usually.