Cat Zingano and former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey have fought each other before, with Rousey submitting Zingano is under 30 seconds at UFC 184. Rousey has since lost her women’s bantamweight title and is in the midst of a two fight losing streak, but Zingano does feel like she has to be protective of the former champion.
“People want to rip on [Ronda] for that shit (having suicidal thoughts),” she says to MMA Fighting. “It’s brave. It’s crazy the reaction she got, and it made me even more protective of her. I could easily hate her. I could easily have disdain for her, for the fact that I am on the losing of making history. But it’s not like that for me. She’s done a lot for me. Just like I would for anybody else. My neighbor helps me. If somebody came at my neighbor the way Amanda came at Ronda, I’d be in their face just the way I’m in her face. That’s who I am, and that’s what I do. Half the reason I fight the way I fight is because of where I get my mind, and I’m very protective of the things that matter to me.”
Zingano relates to Rousey being on a losing streak, but she hopes to learn from those experiences and one day fight the woman she is protective of.
“The thing I got from it was everything I needed to learn,” Zingano says. “Yeah it was a shitty experience, and that’s how I learned the things I needed to learn in order to be where I am right now. I’ll take it. I would have paid all my money to learn what I needed to learn. If that’s all it took for me to learn that, then I’ll take it. I would love to fight Ronda for the belt. I would love to avenge my loss and fight her again for what that means to me. I don’t know what it means to her, but to me that’s what it would look like for me in perfect world.”
Zingano’s two defeats have come to the aforementioned Ronda Rousey and Julianna Pena, while Rousey’s two losses came to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes.
