It sure sounds like Rashad Evans isn’t the biggest fan of Ronda Rousey.
The former UFC women’s bantamweight queen has fallen on hard times. It wasn’t long ago when she was the biggest superstar in the sport, an undefeated champion with an air of invincibility dusting every challenger in her path on the way to stardom.
However, that all changed when Holly Holm shut the lights off with that ferocious head kick in Melbourne, and her chance to climb back to the top against Amanda Nunes ended in failure with the Brazilian issuing her a 48 second ass whoopin‘ to spoil the comeback party plans.
After not tasting defeat’s bitter taste for her first 12 professional fights, Rousey is now riding a two-fight skid and former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans told MMA Alpha that the blinding spotlight of UFC 207 may not have helped her.
“You know where you step into that spotlight to have a great performance, you also got to understand you may not have a great performance and you got to understand that you may be criticized for what you didn’t do or what you could’ve done or whatever.”
Evans also believes that her mindset heading into her fight against Holly Holm at UFC 193 may have had an impact on her last showing inside the Octagon.
Evans believes that Rousey was overconfident prior to facing “The Preacher’s Daughter” to the point where it actually disgusted him.
“Another part to that, is I think that she is not trying to be hung by the same words that she was last time. If you recall Ronda going into the fight with Holly Holm, she was uber-confident, she was almost disrespectful, you know? ‘No one can be champion as well as me’ and just her arrogance… it was kind of disgusting.”
After being forced to eat a lot of her words in the build up to that fight, he feels that contributed to her not wanting to partake in any of the media events during fight week.
“I think those were the words that kind of ate at her when she lost because everyone brought it up, continued. And now I think she’s to the point where she’s like, ‘You know what, I’m not going to say anything, I’m not going to give you a sound bite to hang me with afterward if I don’t win this fight’.”
If this was Rousey’s tactic, you have to admit it was pretty effective. There’s no one hanging her on what she said before taking on Nunes because, well, she didn’t say much at all.
