Love her or love to boo her, Ronda Rousey is one of the few athletes to make it to the very top levels of both MMA and pro wrestling. She appears to be done with WWE, perhaps for good, following her loss to good friend turned bitter enemy Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam.
That raises an obvious question: Might she be circling back to the UFC?
According to someone who should know, UFC president Dana White, no.
“There’s no shot,” White told Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso when asked about the possibility of Rousey appearing on the UFC 300 card next spring.
“Her dream was to win a UFC championship, then win a WWE championship, and she’s done it,” he continued. “Now she’s starting a family. Ronda has made so much money, and she’s still making a lot of money in sponsorships.”
Rousey has one daughter already with husband Travis Browne (himself a former MMA fighter), born during time she took away from WWE between April 2019 and June 2022.
She hasn’t fought in the Octagon since UFC 207 in December 2016, when Amanda Nunes defeated her by TKO to prevent Rousey from reclaiming the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship. She lost that same title in her previous fight to Holly Holm, which was her first defeat as a professional fighter.
While it’s fair to say Rousey probably didn’t have the same ongoing impact in WWE as the company might have expected when it first signed her in 2017, her accomplishments in both the ring and Octagon mean there’s going to be some ongoing level of interest in what she does next for quite a while. At least for now, it appears she might be retired from WWE and UFC, meaning Rousey’s “Baddest Woman on the Planet” era may finally be finished.