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Dana White hints at Ronda Rousey retiring from MMA
Ultimate Fighting Championship

Dana White hints at Ronda Rousey retiring from MMA

Published Jan. 31, 2017 4:08 p.m. ET

Ronda Rousey made history during the few years she spent in mixed martial arts, but it appears her run is about to come to an end.

According to UFC president Dana White, who spoke with Rousey just recently, it seems the former women's bantamweight champion is likely going to call it a career following a stunning 48-second loss to Amanda Nunes this past December.

The first-round TKO came just over a year after Rousey suffered a similarly brutally head-kick knockout from Holly Holm that cost her the women's bantamweight title she had previously defended six times.

"She's good. Her spirits are good. She's doing her thing. In the conversation that I had with her, if I had to say right here right now, and again I don't like saying right here, right now because it's up to her and it's her thing but I wouldn't say she fights again," White revealed on the latest episode of "UFC Unfiltered".

"I think she's probably done. I think she's going to ride off into the sunset and start living her life outside of fighting."

 

Rousey hasn't made any kind of official statement regarding her retirement, instead, asking for time to reflect on the loss before she makes a decision about her fighting future.

Judging by the conversation with White this week, it seems Rousey is nearing her retirement after a trailblazing career in the UFC where she helped introduce women's mixed martial arts to the masses.

The two losses in a row were certainly a shock to the system for Rousey after she seemed unbeatable through her first 12 fights, but White says that a crack in her veneer of invincibility didn't shatter her confidence, which ultimately led to her exit from the sport.




Instead, White looks at Rousey's declaration that she wanted to retire undefeated and go down as one of the greatest fighters of all time as a bigger reason why she's contemplating a new career path following back-to-back losses.

"It's not even that I think it was an invincible thing. It's just that she's so competitive that her career, her record meant everything to her and then once she lost, she started to say to herself 'what the (expletive) am I doing? This is my whole life. This is it? I want to experience and start doing other things' and that's what she started to do," White revealed.

"She's got a lot of money. She's never going to need money again. Cause unless you spend money like crazy, unless you spend money like Floyd (Mayweather), you're not going to need money again when you have the kind of money that Ronda has. She's not a big spender. She's got a cute place down in Venice, Calif. and I think she's got some plans she wants to move to more desolate place and do her thing. I'm happy for her."

There's no doubt the impact that Rousey had on the UFC and women's mixed martial arts in particular during her relatively short career that spanned only eight fights and just over three years in the UFC, assuming that she actually retires from fighting.

"She came in, she changed the world," White said about Rousey. "She put female fighting on the map. She's been part of the biggest fights in the history of women's fighting. I hope those records can be broken. I don't know if they can but I hope they can."

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