Ronda Rousey confirms she’s not a time traveler, gets hostile with ESPN over MMA losses

It looks like the blackout on asking Ronda Rousey about her MMA career has been lifted. But that doesn’t mean that asking will get interviewers anywhere.

The former UFC champion made the ESPN talk show rounds recently as part of the build up to her WWE WrestleMania 34 match. And when conversation strayed toward the end of her UFC run, things got weird.

“There’s a possibility that I could go back in time? That’s your question to me!?” Rousey asked a fumbling Mike Golic, in response to his poorly worded inquiry about leaving the UFC.

“I do not have the ability to go back in time, no.”

And while it’s always fun to see an ESPN talking head get spoken down to – especially for a question as poorly constructed as that one – Rousey made it clear that her abrasiveness over the topic wasn’t limited to just that interview.

“I experienced a lot of people who quote, ‘some people,’ who are really just afraid to state their own opinion,” Rousey replied to a question from Max Kellerman, asking what she thought of the out-sized backlash to her losses in MMA.

“Well thank you for defending me, I appreciate that,” Rousey added, when Kellerman tried to explain that he felt the response to her losses had been overblown.

To his own credit, Kellerman did indeed go to bat for Rousey following her loss to Holly Holm. Speaking to FightHype.com back in 2015, the ESPN commentator said, “There’s a sense out there that [Ronda Rousey] was overrated. And if people were calling her the greatest female athlete in the world, then yes she’s overrated… I just thought, ‘She’s the best female MMA fighter in the world.’ And she was. She wasn’t overrated, if you had a sober view to begin with. What she did was amazing!”

For now, positively slanted or not, it still seems like the newly minted WWE talent has zero patience for talk of her losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes. So while interviewers are free to ask, they do so at the risk of some incredibly awkward air time.