Can Anyone Blame Ronda Rousey For Making The Jump To Huge Movie Roles?
UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has enjoyed an meteoric rise to stardom, her talent and charisma even able to make Dana White warm up to the idea of WMMA. Now, her success is beginning to translate into huge opportunities outside of fight, and she’s made waves in recent weeks for her upcoming movie roles in “The Expendables 3,” and “Fast and Furious 7.”
Those are two huge franchises, and Rousey’s sudden involvement left the MMA community speculating as to how long she actually left in her fighting career. After all, it’s understandably hard to resist the fame and money acting provides when compared to the grinding long hours it takes to be a top-level fighter. To calm the fires, Rousey soon voiced her thoughts that she might have around two years of fighting left.
But this seemed to draw more of a backlash than anything before it, and it visibly angered the undefeated champion. She took to twitter with some strong-willed responses:
But ill tell you what,every1 giving me shit4entertaining the idea is expediting it.Im a fighter&always will be,only ill know when its enough
— Ronda Rousey (@RondaRousey) August 10, 2013
So fuck all you hating twitter bitches, have a great time spending the rest of your day seething over my options and choices
— Ronda Rousey (@RondaRousey) August 10, 2013
From the look of things, Rousey is none too happy with her critics. It’s never easy to be in the face of staunch criticism, but a certain amount of it comes with being the first-ever UFC women’s champion. And all this has come after Rousey has only fought one single fight in the octagon. Her star is rising to a previously unforeseen level, one that could quickly surpass any of the success that former Strikeforce women’s champ Gina Carano has enjoyed in acting.
So with that established, is it really fair for anyone to blast Rousey’s decision to take the big-name movie roles? It’s an opportunity that precious few will ever be afforded, and she has the ability to become a true mainstream star. No MMA fighter has ever done that in America to this date. True, Rousey should perhaps entertain fight fans with some more title fights, but she did at least give herself a timetable of 2-3 more years in the cage.
Overall, it’s kind of exciting to see an MMA champion transition to such widely released movie roles. It means that the sport is getting noticed, and that’s good for MMA as a whole. It’s always been a goal of the UFC to get onto that same level of sports exposure as the main four sports enjoy, and while there’s still of ton work to be done, Rousey’s acting roles could definitely be a big step in the right direction.
We’ll just have to see how the films perform. Because the pressures of Hollywood might just be tougher to fight off than any opponent she’ll meet in the octagon.
