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Opinion: Holographic Ronda’s Surprising Presence
- Updated: December 30, 2016
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.* * * Regardless of what transpires at UFC 207, the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s year-end event seems destined for historical notoriety based on the pre-fight shenanigans alone. We’ve had Cain Velasquez torpedo his rematch with Fabricio Werdum by publicly discussing his impending surgery and managing pain with cannabidiol; Johny Hendricks blew weight again; Cody Garbrandt and Jeremy Stephens got into a fight; and of course, Ronda Rousey has done no media. How we wind up remembering Rousey’s media kibosh will be inevitably tied to whether or not she beats Amanda Nunes, but there is a certain toothlessness to it anyway. She didn’t let the “UFC Embedded” crew get much footage of her and she balked at doing fight week press, but it’s not like Rousey has been some kind of ghost. She did daytime television with Ellen Degeneres and late-night television with Conan O’Brien. She still pops up on TV in her MetroPCS commercials. Her Twitter and Instagram accounts have been well maintained, belching out constant streams of black and white photos, #FearTheReturn propaganda, Susan B. Anthony quotes and UFC 207 promos. That’s not exactly an absence. Plus, she’s still the subject of a ton of media, even if she’s not an active participant in it. There’s Rousey pieces on just about every major American newspaper’s website. Brett Okamoto’s Cheat Sheet on UFC 207 was front and center for most of Thursday on ESPN.com. She got a Darren Rovell puff piece on the site, too, plus an ESPN The Magazine piece by Ramona Shelburne. She’s still a TMZ fixture, and E! Online has a boilerplate “best shape of her life” story on Rousey. She’s on Esquire, Forbes and Maxim’s sites right now. Again, she doesn’t exactly lack for coverage. As fellow Sherdog columnist Todd Martin discussed in his piece this week, it’s arguable that Rousey staying silent and passing on the most rote of media engagements has created greater drama and intrigue than her bout with Nunes would have in the first …
