Fears that the UFC’s newest superstar Ronda Rousey’s time in the sport may be limited as her star continues to rise and Hollywood comes calling may be grounded in reality as the woman’s bantamweight champion now claims she may retire in just two years time.
“I said from the beginning that I wok in quadrennials,” Rousey says in a new interview with MMAJunkie. “I do four-year cycles. I think I’ve got two years left in me, realistically, if I’m going to do this like an Olympic run.”
Rousey has already inserted a prominent role in the upcoming ‘The Expendables 3’ movie into her busy schedule prior to her upcoming title defense against Miesha Tate at UFC 168 on December 28th, and yesterday it emerged she’s also been targeted for a role in ‘Fast & Furious 7’ which will also be filmed this Autumn.
Like other fighters before her such as Gina Carano and Randy Couture, the lure of acting in big budget movies appears to already be starting to look like a more attractive proposition than stepping into the Octagon for Rousey.
“I think one profession has a much-longer shelf life than the other,” she admits at one stage.
The alarm bells must be ringing in the ears of everyone at UFC HQ at this stage as this is all happening in a remarkably short space of time.
Rousey’s only had one fight in the UFC up to this point and has just seven fights logged in here entire career, yet at the age of 26 she’s already contemplating retirement in the near future. That’s essentially an unheard of trajectory for a fighter successfully competing in the Octagon.
The fate of woman’s MMA in the UFC may also rest in Rousey’s hands. Without her there’s no doubt that we wouldn’t be watching female’s fighting in the Octagon at this moment in time – Dana White’s been candid about that – and if she left then it’s fate would hang in the balance once again.
Rousey’s hope however is that in two years time the women will have solidified their position in the promotion enough that they’ll be able to continue on without her when the time comes for her to hang up her gloves.
“I’ve got two more years to get the ball rolling without me,” Rousey said. “‘TUF’ was the first step. It’s not the last one, but the work’s getting done.
It certainly sounds as if Rousey has given this a lot of thought, and you can’t help but wonder how focused she is on her upcoming fight with everything that’s going on around her.
So far she’s looked to be head-and-shoulders above the competition, but fighters who openly admit they are contemplating retirement don’t tend to fare as well as those who are 100% focused on their careers so it’s going to be very interesting to see how Rousey performs in her upcoming rematch with Tate in December.
