Ronda Rousey: ‘This is definitely one of my last fights’

Ronda Rousey, the biggest female star in combat sports history, said today that her career is near its completion.

Appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, when asked how much longer the 29-year-old Rousey will fight, she replied, “Not that long. This is definitely one of my last fights. I want everybody to watch. The show isn’t going to be around forever.”

Rousey will challenge UFC bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes in the main event of a December 30th show at the T Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, that also includes Dominick Cruz defending his bantawmeight title against Cody Garbrant, Cain Velasquez vs. Fabricio Werdum, Johny Hendricks vs. Neil Magny and Matt Brown vs. Tarec Saffiedien as the PPV lineup.

While most expected Rousey had only a few fights left, and that if she lost it would be her last fight, she was a huge revenue driver for UFC and a key reason for the record breaking profits in 2015, where she fought three times.

An interesting note regarding UFC 207, is that tickets, which go on sale to Fight Club members on Wednesday and to the public on Friday, are priced at $600, $300, $200, $150, $90 and $75 before service charges. That’s way down in pricing from the previous shows in the arena. It would be the company’s third show at T Mobile, and neither UFC 200, with Brock Lesnar and the most loaded show ever in Las Vegas, and UFC 202, with Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz in one of the most anticipated fights in company history, were able to sell the arena out.

The McGregor vs. Diaz fight sold 12,657 tickets and had 14,060 total in the building for a gate of $7,620,010, with ticket pries roughly double what they are charging for 12/30.

It’s a major mistake if Rousey is only doing one or two fights to have put the show on December 30th, a Friday night, because the last time UFC ran on a Friday night, on December 30, 2011, with Brock Lesnar vs. Alistair Overeem, the show did 530,000 buys on PPV, down a significant number from what the show would have been expected to do on a Saturday night.