UFC President Dana White Doesn’t Expect Ronda Rousey to Fight Again

Dana White is among the many who believes that Ronda Rousey may be done with fighting.

The UFC president recently spoke with the ex-bantamweight queen, and while he said that her “spirits are good” and she’s in a “real good place,” he expects that Rousey will move on to the next phase of her life.

“In the conversation 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 — but I wouldn’t say she fights again,” White said on the UFC “Unfiltered” podcast. “I think she’s probably done. She’s going to ride off into the sunset and start living life outside of fighting.”

After taking more than a year-long hiatus following the first loss of her professional career, Rousey returned to the Octagon at UFC 207 on Dec. 31. The results weren’t pretty, as the Olympic judoka suffered a 48-second technical knockout loss to reigning 135-pound champion Amanda Nunes in the evening’s main event.

White said that Rousey made enough money her rise to prominence in the UFC, when she became perhaps the biggest crossover star the sport had ever seen. After Rousey lost for the first time to Holly Holm at UFC 193, her mentality changed, White said.

“It’s not even that I think it’s an invincible thing, it’s just that she’s so competitive that her career and record meant everything to her. And then once she lost, she started to say to herself, ‘what the f*ck am I doing? This is my whole life — this is it? I want to experience and start doing other things,’” White said. “And I think that’s what she started to do, and she’s got a lot of money. She’s never going to need money again.

“Because, unless you spend money like Floyd [Mayweather], you’re not going to need money again when you have the kind of money Ronda has.”

Rousey began her career with 12 consecutive triumphs, with all but one coming inside of a round. She first captured the Strikeforce bantamweight strap and blazed a trail for women in the UFC by becoming the Las Vegas-based promotion’s first 135-pound champion. If Rousey never fights again, White won’t be upset.

“I’m happy for her, man,” he said. “She came in, she changed the world. She put female fighting on the map. She’s been part of the biggest fights in the history of women’s fighting, and I hope those records can be broken. I don’t know if they can, but I hope they can.”