With a host of new contenders emerging to challenge for the UFC women's bantamweight championship, Ronda Rousey will likely have no problem finding her next opponent. Though no fight has been made yet, she's always looking to test herself and knows who she'd like to face next.
"Gina is the worst style matchup for me possible," Rousey told MMAjunkie. "She's the only girl that I feel like has the best feeling and the best sense of distance."
Rousey was referring to for Strikeforce women's featherweight championship contender Gina Carano, who was once the face of women's mixed martial arts, as Rousey is currently. Carano hasn't competed since 2009 when she lost to Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino, but UFC President Dana White has said in recent weeks that he's been negotiating with Carano to bring her to the UFC.
Rousey has dominated her last two opponents and is coming off of a 16-second knockout victory in July. With Carano being out of the cage for so long, it's hard to consider her a real threat to dethrone Rousey. But "Rowdy" believes that ring rust won't be an issue and that Carano could be the toughest opponent she's ever faced, a challenge Rousey is more than willing to accept.
"The feeling of distance and timing and feeling and all that, that stuff doesn't go away if you take time off," Rousey said. "Those things are always with you. That's your bicycle.
"And I'm sure Gina is 100 percent serious about it," she continued. "She is not going to start training once the fight is announced. She's already been training for months and months and months. I think she's already started quite a while ago, and she only has me in mind, and so I expect that she's going to be extremely prepared and a very dangerous opponent despite what other people would like to speculate."
If White is able to get a deal done and sign Carano, Rousey already has her eyes set on fighting in the co-main event at UFC 182 in Las Vegas on Jan. 3, which is headlined by Jon Jones' defense of his light heavyweight title against Daniel Cormier.
"I desperately want to fight on the Jon Jones-Cormier card," Rousey said. "I want to be able to share that card with Jon just to be able to say I have."
Other contenders to Rousey's title include Cat Zingano, the former number-one contender who was sidelined with injury for much of the past year, the newly-signed Holly Holm, and Justino, the former Strikeforce women's featherweight champion and another challenge Rousey is willing to undertake.
"If she walked in here right now and they said, 'It's sanctioned, it's legal, she won't sue, and you can fight her,' I would fight her right now," Rousey said. "I said it the other day: I don't make fights. I show up and win them."
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