Ronda Rousey is a huge favorite entering her rematch with Miesha Tate at UFC 168 for good reason. Rousey is 7-0 and has won all seven of her fights by first-round submission. She is an armbar machine, and it was only in her most recent fight against Liz Carmouche that she looked anything less than invincible. But Rousey is too cocky entering this fight.
Rousey will be starring in “Fast & Furious 7” and “The Expendables 3” and has been filming scenes for both movies. Filming has been time consuming; the long hours led to Rousey getting sick, which she says rarely happens. Rousey told MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani that the reason she filmed while preparing for a fight was to further challenge herself because just beating Tate again wouldn’t have been enough. You can hear Ariel’s question about filming the movies around the 1:10 mark in the video below:
“I need to prove people wrong about something,” Rousey tells Helwani. “I can’t just have everyone think it’s a foregone conclusion [that I’m going to win]. That doesn’t do anything for me, that doesn’t get me motivated. I need to have people doubting me. And I needed to create a reason for people to doubt me because I already won the UFC title and I already beat Miesha. So I needed to come up with a way to make it even harder and more difficult for people to be like, ‘Is that even really possible?’
“I need to find a way to make sure I’m doing something that’s never been done before for every single fight because that’s the only way I’m going to fight to my fullest potential.”
Despite the balancing act, Rousey says she feels great and that she’s never felt better entering a fight.
Feeling a need to challenge yourself and creating more obstacles is nothing new for top athletes, but it’s certainly risky. Rousey is making it sound like just beating Tate again wouldn’t be enough for her. I’m not sure why she feels that is the case. What, does she want to strap one arm behind her back and see if she can win? Will she only feel satisfied if she beats Tate by hopping on one leg?
It’s a dangerous attitude for her to have, even if I still think she’ll win the fight. She needs to give Tate much more credit than that.
