We still don’t know exactly when UFC superstar Ronda Rousey will return to the Octagon, but the smart money is on her fighting at the newly announced UFC 205 event at Madison Square Garden in New York City on November 12th.
Rousey was in attendance yesterday as Governer Andrew Cuomo officially signed a bill to MMA legal in the state, and afterwards the former bantamweight champion admitted she was interested in fighting on the MSG card.
“It would definitely be a cool thing to stick on your resume, but I wouldn’t do it for that reason,” Rousey said. “It’s important because of the history. I want a tie to a historical place like this and I want to be remembered in a positive way. I’m from Los Angeles, where if something is 50 years old, they tear it down and build a new one. It’s not for my own vanity. It’s for a place in history. I don’t have a single picture of myself fighting in my house. I don’t have my belts, they’re hidden. I don’t like putting stuff out there, but I like fighting for a place in history.”
Rousey actually played her part in helping to get MMA legalized in the state, as she lobbyed Governer Cuomo and other state leglislators last year in an attempt to get the bill passed.
“”Fighting for acceptance is always important to me, regardless of the venue and where it is,” Rousey said. “I used to live upstate in Albany. I trained judo over there, and my best friends’ families were over there and they never got a chance to see me perform because I was never allowed to be over here. I think the audacity of people saying ‘You can’t,’ that kept me coming back and wanting to fight for it even more and more.
“It was just the right thing to do, and it’s never hard to get motivated to do the right thing.”
Being a part of the process left her with another strong movitivation to want to appear at this historic event, which also happens to fall right in line with her plan to return before the end of the year.
“I would love to have the opportunity to fight here because this is another time I feel like I earned the right to fight here because I fought for it,” she said. “It wasn’t just something that fell on my plate; I was part of the process and I think that’s what a lot of the New York fighters will be feeling when they finally get to fight in their hometown.”
