Ronda Rousey Again Weighs In On The Gender Pay Gap [Video]

MMA superstar Ronda Rousey was once again called upon to field a question from the news media about the gender pay gap.

Rousey is currently in Australia to promote her upcoming fight there on November 15 at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne against Holly Holm at UFC 193.

The reigning UFC bantam weight champion defeated Bethe Correia in 34 seconds last August at UFC 190 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She dedicated the fight to Rowdy Roddy Piper, the deceased WWE star with whom she shared a nickname.

A former Olympic bronze medalist in judo (the first female competitor from the U.S. to earn a medal in that sport), Rousey went on to become the first female fighter to sign with the Ultimate Fighting Championship group after previously being affiliated with Strikeforce.

Rousey, 28, also has a burgeoning acting career, which will include playing herself in a film based on her autobiography.

In a press conference where the income inequality issue was raised, an Australian reporter asked the martial arts star whether she experienced frustration about gender pay inequality in connection with an apparent controversy involving salary levels for that country’s women’s soccer team.

Given the nature or the presupposition of the question, Rousey’s response probably took the journalist by surprise.

“I think that how much you get paid should have something to do with how much money you bring in. I’m the highest paid fighter not because Dana [White] and Lorenzo [Fertitta] wanted to do something nice for the ladies. They do it because I bring in the highest numbers. They do it because I make them the most money. And I think the money that they make should be proportionate to the money they bring in.”

In a Yahoo News interview in August, a reporter similarly asked the undefeated UFC fighter is she was angry that professional boxers like Floyd Mayweather earn so much more than she does. Rousey responded as follows.

“I don’t like to talk about exactly how much money I make, but I’m extremely comfortable and happy…If I had almost 50 fights, I’d probably be making close to the same amount of money as Floyd does. But at this point, I have eleven. I can’t expect it to be exactly equal yet, I don’t think. I have to put more time in.”

In the same interview, Ronda Rousey also praised MMA in that UFC is the most pro-woman sport’s organization in the world because it makes no distinction between male and female fighters. She holds the bantamweight belt, not the women’s bantamweight championship, Rousey noted.

Although the gender pay gap between men and women is a big issue/obsession for feminists, obviously some elements of the news media, and for politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (who’ve reportedly have had issues with pay equity in their own offices), other researchers and analysts have argued in the alternative that factoring in variables such as seniority and continuous work experience, education, hours worked, and type of job minimizes if not eliminates the gender pay gap.

Pay discrimination on the basis of gender has been illegal in the U.S. since 1963.

“Thanks to her no-nonsense attitude — and wicked arm bar — the UFC women’s bantamweight champion become a cultural icon in 2015. Naturally, she’s been asked to weigh in on some of society’s most controversial issues, and her answers are as equally awesome as her Carl’s Jr. commercial,” the Daily Caller quipped about Rousey’s gender inequality/gender pay gap rejoinder in Australia.

When asked about politics on CNN recently, Ronda Rousey claimed that she wouldn’t consider voting for Rousey fan Donald Trump because she is unenthusiastic about a reality TV star running the country.

[Photo by Anthony Kwan/Getty Images]