Following Ronda Rousey's 16-second decimation of Alexis Davis at UFC 175 on Saturday, commentator Joe Rogan asked the women's bantamweight champion if she'd be ready to step in and fight at UFC 176 on Aug. 2, a card virtually destroyed by the cancellation of the featherweight title rematch between Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes.
Rousey, of course, said she was more than willing to save the card, a notion that was immediately squashed by company president Dana White. At the time, White looked visibly upset that Rogan put Rousey on the spot, but in reality he was mad at the production team for prompting Rogan to ask the question.
"I wasn't upset with Joe Rogan," White said in a presser following the event (via MMAFighting). "I was upset with the truck telling him to tell Ronda that she's going to fight again. That wasn't true. That was some shit that somebody made up back there. It was the biggest idiotic move in the history of our production team. I told them right up there that's not true. I don't know where that came from. Nobody told anybody to say that."
Rogan, for his part, assumed it was White's idea to ask Rousey if she'd be ready to fight again in less than a month.
"Just for the record Dana wasn't pissed at me at all," Rogan posted on The Underground (via MMAFighting). "I thought it was actually Dana's idea when the producers interrupted me to get me to ask that question when I was trying to wrap up the interview. It's incredibly rare that the guys in the truck ever ask me to ask a specific question.
"He was upset that someone overstepped their bounds and decided it would be a good idea to ask Ronda to fight again in a month. Decisions like that always come from Dana and Lorenzo, so when a producer thought it would be a good idea to ask Ronda that before consulting them he was really pissed off."
