Ronda Rousey: UFC return just as likely as Olympic return

By Nick ZaccardiMar 13, 2018, 1:47 PM EDT

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Ronda Rousey repeated that she doesn’t know if she will return to UFC in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres published Tuesday.

“It’s just as likely as me going to back to another Olympics for judo,” the 31-year-old Rousey said. “No one demanded a written resignation from me for judo, and I don’t really think the same thing is necessary for fighting. I’m just doing what I enjoy, and WWE is what I enjoy right now.”

Rousey, a 2008 Olympic judo bronze medalist, is now under contract with WWE. She is scheduled for a match debut at WrestleMania on April 8 in a mixed tag-team event with 1996 Olympic wrestling champion Kurt Angle as her partner.

“I’m nervous, but it’s not like Olympics nervous,” Rousey said. “The worst thing that’ll happen is I’ll look stupid.”

Rousey said in an ESPN interview published Jan. 28 that WWE has “first priority on my time the next several years.” Rousey shrugged off a question about retirement from mixed martial arts.

“That’s what everybody else seems to say,” Rousey said. “I mean, I never retired from judo. If that’s what you guys want to think, all I know is that I really want to devote 100 percent of my time to wrestling right now, and whatever people want to call that, they can call it.”

Previously, Rousey said she needed “to take some time to reflect and think about the future” on Dec. 31, 2016, one day after losing her second straight UFC fight via a brutal TKO at the pummeling hands of Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 in Las Vegas.

Rousey has been out of MMA ever since.

UFC president Dana White said in January 2017 that he believed Rousey would never fight in UFC again.

“I think she’s probably done,” White said then. “I think she’s going to ride off into the sunset and start living her life outside of fighting.”

White said he made those comments after speaking to Rousey earlier that same day.

“Her spirits are good. She’s doing her own thing,” he said. “In the conversation that I had with her, if I had to say right here, right now — and, again, I don’t like saying right here, right now because, you know, it’s up to her and her thing — but I wouldn’t say she fights again.”

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2023 French Open men’s singles draw

By OlympicTalkJun 7, 2023, 5:18 PM EDT

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The French Open men’s singles draw is missing injured 14-time champion Rafael Nadal for the first time since 2004, leaving the Coupe des Mousquetaires ripe for the taking.

The tournament airs live on NBC Sports, Peacock and Tennis Channel through championship points in Paris.

Novak Djokovic is not only bidding for a third crown at Roland Garros, but also to lift a 23rd Grand Slam singles trophy to break his tie with Nadal for the most in men’s history.

FRENCH OPEN: Broadcast Schedule | Women’s Draw

But the No. 1 seed is Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who won last year’s U.S. Open to become, at 19, the youngest man to win a major since Nadal’s first French Open title in 2005.

Now Alcaraz looks to become the second-youngest man to win at Roland Garros since 1989, after Nadal of course.

Alcaraz missed the Australian Open in January due to a right leg injury, but since went 30-3 with four titles. Notably, he has not faced Djokovic this year. They meet in Friday’s semifinals.

Russian Daniil Medvedev, the No. 2 seed, was upset in the first round by 172nd-ranked Brazilian qualifier Thiago Seyboth Wild. It marked the first time a men’s top-two seed lost in the first round of any major since 2003 Wimbledon (Ivo Karlovic d. Lleyton Hewitt).

All of the American men lost before the fourth round. The last U.S. man to make the French Open quarterfinals was Andre Agassi in 2003.

MORE: All you need to know for 2023 French Open

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2023 French Open Men’s Singles Draw

IOC board recommends withdrawing International Boxing Association’s recognition

Associated PressJun 7, 2023, 2:30 PM EDT

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The IOC finally ran out of patience with the International Boxing Federation on Wednesday and set a date to terminate its Olympic status this month.

While boxing will still be on the program at the 2024 Paris Games, the International Olympic Committee said its executive board has asked the full membership to withdraw its recognition of the IBA at a special meeting on June 22.

IOC members rarely vote against recommendations from their 15-member board and the IBA’s ouster is likely a formality.

The IOC had already suspended the IBA’s recognition in 2019 over long-standing financial, sports integrity and governance issues. The Olympic body oversaw the boxing competitions itself at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021 and will do so again for Paris.

An IOC statement said the boxing body “has failed to fulfil the conditions set by the IOC … for lifting the suspension of the IBA’s recognition.”

The IBA criticized what it called a “truly abhorrent and purely political” decision by the IOC and warned of “retaliatory measures.”

“Now, we are left with no chance but to demand a fair assessment from a competent court,” the boxing body’s Russian president Umar Kremlev said in a statement.

The IOC-IBA standoff has also put boxing’s place at the 2028 Los Angeles Games at risk, though that should now be resolved.

The IOC previously stressed it has no problem with the sport or its athletes — just the IBA and its current president Kremlev, plus financial dependence on Russian state energy firm Gazprom.

In a 24-page report on IBA issues published Wednesday, the IOC concluded “the accumulation of all of these points, and the constant lack of drastic evolution throughout the many years, creates a situation of no-return.”

Olympic boxing’s reputation has been in question for decades. Tensions heightened after boxing officials worldwide ousted long-time IOC member C.K. Wu as their president in 2017 when the organization was known by its French acronym AIBA.

“From a disreputable organization named AIBA governed by someone from the IOC’s upper echelon, we committed to and executed a change in the toxic and corrupt culture that was allowed to fester under the IOC for far too long,” Kremlev said Wednesday in a statement.

National federations then defied IOC warnings in 2018 by electing as their president Gafur Rakhimov, a businessman from Uzbekistan with alleged ties to organized crime and heroin trafficking.

Kremlev’s election to replace Rakhimov in 2020 followed another round of IOC warnings that went unheeded.

Amid the IBA turmoil, a rival organization called World Boxing has attracted initial support from officials in the United States, Switzerland and Britain.

The IBA can still continue to organize its own events and held the men’s world championships last month in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.

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2023 French Open Men’s Singles Draw

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