Ronda Rousey is currently on an Australian press tour promoting her upcoming fight on November 14th in Melbourne, and during her most recent press conference she got hit with a zinger of a question that would’ve left most professional athletes pleading the fifth:
Reporter: We’ve got quite a large pay dispute happening with our Australian women’s soccer team at the moment. Is it frustrating for you as someone who’s so prominent in your sport…that that sort of thing is still going on?
For context, Australia’s national women’s soccer team has recently made headlines about how poor their pay and working conditions are in comparison to the men’s team. Rather than answer this specific question, Rousey gave a pretty fair answer in relation to pay in women’s sports:
I think that how much you get paid should have something to do with how much you bring in. I’m the highest paid fighter not because Dana and Lorenzo wanted to do something nice for the ladies. They do it because I bring in the highest numbers. Because I make them the most money. So I think the money that they make should be proportionate to the money they bring in.
That seems pretty fair, although fairness isn’t always the outcome when it comes to employers paying employees fair and livable wages. If you could stiff your employees and pocket extra cash, would you? Probably. I of course wouldn’t because I’m a goddamn saint, but then again not everyone is as pious as I am so we can’t just be letting everyone run on the honor system 24/7.
Regardless, there’s no denying that Rousey deserves every penny in her paycheck, irrelevant of what the male fighters bring in.
[H/T Submission Radio and Uproxx]