Eric Bischoff is now weighing in on Ronda Rousey’s quick MMA comeback win over Gina Carano, and he had plenty to say about why the fight left him disappointed.
While speaking on the 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff said he wasn’t angry about the fight, but he was disappointed because he wanted to see whether Rousey could still deliver in a real combat setting. He said he had watched her striking footage beforehand and hoped she might be hiding real improvement.
“I was not—I wasn’t angry about it. I was disappointed, because I wanted to see if Ronda Rousey could live up to her hype. I watched Ronda’s striking workouts—it was the most unathletic, horrible stuff. I thought, well, she must be working. She must be wanting people to think she doesn’t have good hands. So maybe she secretly does, and we’re not going to see it until the fight.”
Bischoff explained that his main interest was seeing whether Rousey had improved her hands or if she was still mostly relying on the grappling and judo that made her famous.
“So I just wanted to see—maybe she’s upped her game. I wanted to see her hands. I wanted to see if she was as good as she made it look like she was.”
Bischoff also said he did not have strong expectations for Gina Carano, but admitted he didn’t realize until the broadcast that Carano had been away from fighting for 17 years. That detail changed how he viewed the entire matchup.
“Gina Carano—I didn’t know what to expect from her. I didn’t have high expectations, didn’t have low expectations. I honestly didn’t realize it had been 17 years since she last fought until I heard the commentators mention it during the fight. Had I known, I probably wouldn’t have stayed up as late to watch it.”
When it came to the actual fight, Bischoff said the emotional side of the moment may have worked for some viewers, but the short runtime left him cold after all the promotion.
“Horrible. Horrible. Good for them—maybe some people liked it because of the feel-good aspect, the relationship between the two. It was heartwarming. You like to see that—two people go out there, beat the hell out of each other, and then when it’s over, it’s over. Hug, go grab a beer—that’s how it’s supposed to be. But man—17 seconds? I’m sorry. All that buildup for 17 seconds.”
Bischoff also criticized the production, saying he tuned in partly to see what the event would do with Netflix’s global platform, but he walked away unimpressed by the overall presentation.
“And the production value—I tuned in because I wanted to see what they’d do with a Netflix global footprint. Huge opportunity. People were going to tune in to see how this played out. But overall, not well produced across the board. I don’t want to nitpick, but just overall I was like, man…”
Bischoff then addressed the online theory that the fight was staged. He said he does not believe it was a work, arguing that a scripted version would have lasted longer and featured more drama.
“Let’s be honest—when you make a match and promote an event, there’s an assumption it’s competitive. That’s the whole point of booking a match. And I don’t think it was a work—I’m not buying any of that at all. I will say, the fact that it was booked made it predictable to a degree. I don’t think anybody predicted 17 seconds. I think everybody—including the producers and promoters—would have loved for it to go longer. But it didn’t.”
Bischoff explained that if the fight had been fake, it likely would have been structured to create tension before the finish. Instead, he said the quick result made the whole thing feel flat.
“If it was a work, it would have gone three or four minutes. There would’ve been rhythm—back and forth, near comebacks, tension. It would’ve built to something. That didn’t happen. It was 17 seconds.”
Bischoff closed by saying the event relied too much on Rousey and Carano’s names instead of whether the fight itself would actually deliver.
“They booked names. They booked legacies. They booked two legacies against each other and hoped people would buy because of name recognition. They clearly didn’t spend enough time worrying about what the actual match was going to look like. And that’s why people feel like it was a work. It wasn’t. It was just a really bad match to promote, in my opinion.”
Bischoff’s criticism comes after Jim Cornette also mocked the Rousey vs. Carano fight, joking that the quick armbar finish looked too easy and too convenient. Rousey has not publicly responded to Bischoff’s comments, but the debate around the short fight clearly has not slowed down.
Do you agree with Eric Bischoff that Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano was just a bad fight to promote, or did the quick finish still work for you? Share your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.
Do you agree with Eric Bischoff that Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano was just a bad fight to promote? Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comment section below.