Dana White explains his decision to have Ronda Rousey headline UFC 157

There seems to be a lot of confusion over the decision to have Ronda Rousey headline UFC 157, considering no female has ever even fought in the UFC, let alone headline. But the same could be said for Demetrious Johnson and Ian McCall. Before them, no flyweights had ever headlined a card when they did on FX, and that wasn’t even for the title – it was a title eliminator. What I’m saying here is that there’s a first time for everything, and there is no reason whatsoever to complain about the fact that Ronda Rousey is headlining a UFC card. This should be celebrated rather than maligned. Finally, we have women in the MMA, and the usual boo-birds are complaining just to complain.

Not that it needed an explanation, but Dana White defended his decision to place the newly-crowned female bantamweight champ to the top of the card at UFC 157 at last night’s TUF 16 finale media scrum. This is what he said (transcribed by MMAFighting):

“She’s the champ,” “You will never see a situation in any fight, whether men, women, the lightest weight division there is. if you’re the champion, you’re the headliner. You’re the top of the card.

“I’ve seen some people talking s—, ‘ohh, the women’s fight is headlining,'” “Ronda Rousey is badass, she’s a champ, her opponent stepped up to the plate and wanted this fight with her when no one, others didn’t. I don’t give a s– what they say, that’s a fact.”

“What people don’t realize is there was a time and a day when we put the ’55 pound division and headlined it with a title fight and people said, ‘you can’t headline a title fight, BJ Penn and Jens Pulver in a title fight headlining?’ This is ridiculous. BJ Penn become one of the biggest stars in mixed martial arts and a huge pay-per-view draw.”

Frankly, we’re happy to see Ronda in the bright lights and we want more women in the UFC as soon as possible, Dana.