Come this November, it will have been a year since Ronda Rousey was last seen in the UFC Octagon. In the meantime, Conor McGregor has picked up the slack, fighting Jose Aldo once and Nate Diaz twice to set a new UFC pay-per-view record. His second fight against Diaz, at UFC 202 on Aug. 20, was the highest-grossing pay-per-view in the promotion’s history, with a reported 1.65 million buys. And McGregor will have the chance to break his own record Nov. 12 at UFC 205 when he fights Eddie Alvarez in an attempt to become the first UFC fighter to hold belts simultaneously in different weight classes — featherweight and lightweight.
Those are some impressive credentials, no doubt, but according to UFC President Dana White, Rousey, the fighter who currently holds no pay-per-view records and no titles, is still the bigger star.
“By far,” White said in a recent appearance on Hot 97 in New York (via BJPenn.com). “Not even close. By far the biggest star. Ronda Rousey is such a big star. When you go down to Brazil, they don’t care who you are. They want the Brazilian to whup your [butt]. When Ronda went down there, they cheered for Ronda over the Brazilian. Never seen that before in my life, and will probably never see it again. That’s how big Ronda Rousey is.”
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White was referring to Rousey’s fight against Bethe Correia in August 2015 in Rio de Janeiro. Rousey was, indeed, more warmly received than the hometown fighter at the time, but that may have had to do more with Rousey’s outside-the-Octagon activities than those in it, despite her undefeated record at that point.
Unlike McGregor, Rousey is a bona fide movie star. She has talked of her admiration for Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, who famously transitioned from the WWE into the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. McGregor, on the other hand, while reportedly garnering some interest from filmmakers, has only one role to his credit, a small part in the upcoming “Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare” video game. In other words, McGregor may live like a Hollywood A-lister, at least judging from all the flashy cars he posts on his Instagram account, but Rousey has the credentials.
Or at least she had the credentials. Like her much-anticipated comeback to the Octagon, Rousey’s burgeoning film career appears to be in a holding pattern.
She was cast in a remake of Patrick Swayze’s “Road House” last year, but it appears the project has yet to be filmed, according to IMDB, which lists the movie as still being in the “treatment/outline” status, meaning it doesn’t yet have a production date. Previously, Rousey has appeared in the “Entourage” movie as well as “Furious 7” and “The Expendables 3.”
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