UFC’s Paige VanZant passing on WWE SummerSlam?

During an appearance with Hannah Storm on ESPN SportsCenter Thursday, UFC strawweight and Dancing With The Stars runner-up Paige VanZant alluded to the fact she’s not going to be appearing at WWE SummerSlam this year.

She said that she loves WWE and would love to work with them, but that she’s focused on her training for a fight that she announced during the interview. The 22-year-old also said that she declined to be in the Kickboxer reboot because filming would have got in the way of training.

VanZant said she’ll be fighting on August 27th against Bec Rawlings in Vancouver, Canada. There was a lot of speculation that Hollywood would come calling for PVZ and that perhaps her fighting career would be behind her, especially considering the beating she had laid on her last year by Rose Namajunas.

Given that SummerSlam is on August 21st, it’s highly doubtful she’ll do an appearance just six days before her return to action.

When asked about what she missed about fighting, she said “the violence” and how it was tough to sit cageside watching other people fight over the past few months. She also talked about the much-publicized incident about Ronda Rousey and that there’s really no relationship there. She wants to move forward from it, and speculated she may have just caught her on a bad day.