The 2018 UFC Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony takes place tonight from The Pearl at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. Coverage of the ceremony begins 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT. and continues the organization’s seventh annual International Fight Week. The 2018 Hall of Fame class headliner is Ronda Rousey, former UFC bantamweight champion and the first female to ever earn the prestigious honor of being inducted. Joining her will be longtime television producer Bruce Connal, promotion co-founder and creator Art Davie, and former UFC welterweight champion – one of two fighters to ever defeat Georges St. Pierre – Matt Serra. Also earning induction will be the fight between Dan Henderson and Mauricio Rua (a bout Henderson won via unanimous decision) at UFC 139. Although the ceremony isn’t airing live on any network, you can still watch the festivities online as the event will be live streamed by the UFC. Here is how to watch online: Do NOT miss the 2018 UFC Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony LIVE on @UFCFightPass tonight! Get @UFCFIGHTPASS for the entire month for only $1 ➡️ https://t.co/yrEhOoaaSJ pic.twitter.com/UA9QI7YRSF — UFC (@ufc) July 5, 2018 Fight Pass is the live subscription service of the UFC. If you subscribe today, you have the option of signing up for the entire month for just $1.00, including access to the 2018 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Throughout the year, signing up for a subscription usually comes with the option for a seven-day free trial, but because it is International Fight Week, the promotion is giving out a sweetheart deal for the time being. Normally, a Fight Pass subscription costs $9.99 per month. You can watch on-demand, on any device by downloading the UFC app, and the service allows you to customize your profile, allowing you to follow up on your favorite fighters. You also get exclusive access to past fights, unrestricted access to International UFC Fight Nights and early preliminary bouts known as Exclusive UFC FIGHT PASS Prelims. The service moves down from $9.99 per month to $8.99 with a six-month commitment, and down to $7.99 per month with a 12-month commitment.<doc-sep>Last night, former UFC women’s bantamweight champion and bona fide WMMA pioneer Ronda Rousey was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. Also inducted this year were Dan Henderson and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, former welterweight champion Matt Serra, and UFC co-founder Art Davie. See the highlights of the induction ceremony in the video above (via MMA Fighting). In her acceptance speech, a gracious Rousey showered her fans with love. “You know I’m not a person who usually struggles to find words. From the bottom of my heart, my soul, my toes, my entire being, I want to thank you,” she said (transcribed by Mike Chiappetta for MMA Fighting). “For the first decade of my athletic career, I was at the pinnacle of athletic accomplishment and no one seemed to care. Nothing changed, and then you came along. The only reason why anything that I ever did had any effect on the world is because you took the time to let it affect you. “Words will never express how humbled I am that you gave me the honor of being the person that made all this possible,” she continued. “I’m not the first person who had the ability to do this, but I am here because I’m the first person you took the time to watch.” “Because of you, I am the first woman standing up here accepting this incredible honor,” Rousey added, discussing what it means to her to be the first woman in the UFC Hall of Fame. “May I be the first of many. I look around and think, together we built this, this division, this sport, this revolution. Together we have redefined what it means to be strong, to be sexy. We have changed what it means to ‘fight like a girl.’” Now that her fighting career has drawn to a close, Ronda Rousey is making her living as a pro wrestler for WWE. What’s your favorite moment from Ronda Rousey’s incredible MMA career? This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/5/2018. This article appeared first on BJPENN.COM<doc-sep>In the midst of what is regularly the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s biggest week of the year, one the greatest stars in the organization’s chronicle took her rightful place. More than 18 months removed from what stands as her final mixed martial arts fight and years removed from forging a path as a dominant and transcendent trailblazer who crossed over into the mainstream, “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey, the first UFC women’s champion, became the first female UFC Hall of Famer. Accepting the honor and speaking in front of a cheerful and emotional audience on Thursday night at the Pearl Concert Theater at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas as part of the UFC’s International Fight Week, Rousey’s speech was very much a heartfelt thank you to her fans. After drinking in the applause following her introduction by UFC President Dana White, her words of thanks came from the onset and endured throughout her speech. “From the bottom of, just not the bottom of my heart, but my soul, my toes, my being, I want to thank you,” she said. “The only reason why anything that I ever did had any effect on the world was because you took the time and let it affect you. Words will never express how humbled I am that you gave me the honor of being the person that made all of this possible. I’m not the first person who had the ability to do this, but I am here because I am the first person you took the time to watch — that you put the energy into supporting. Because of you I am the first woman standing up here accepting this incredible honor. May I be the first of many.” Rousey was the first woman signed to a UFC contract, was the first UFC women’s champion after the organization bought out Strikeforce of which she was the reigning bantamweight (135 pounds) titlist and was the first woman to prevail in a UFC bout when she defeated Liz Carmouche with her signature armbar in the first round of their historic main event at UFC 157 in Anaheim on Feb. 23, 2013. “We changed what it means to fight like a girl,” Rousey said Thursday. For the duration of her career, Rousey trained at the Glendale Fighting Club under coach Edmond Tarverdyan, who was seen in the audience on camera during the ceremony, which was streamed live on UFC Fight Pass. Rousey, who’s currently a member of the World Wrestling Entertainment roster, built a 12-2 career record, claiming all of her victories via stoppage with nine via armbar, and became a true crossover star as the Strikeforce and UFC women’s bantamweight champion showed up in major motion pictures such as “Entourage” and “The Expendables 3”. Her laundry list of firsts was myriad and included becoming the first MMA fighter to win the “Best Fighter” ESPY in 2015 and on two occasions won the ESPY for “Best Female Athlete.” She has appeared on myriad television shows, in multiple movies, released her autobiography “My Fight/Your Fight” and has plenty of projects on the horizon. It all came to be thanks to her dominance in MMA, but also her ability to convince White to bring women’s fighting into the UFC octagon. Just more than five years after she won the first women’s fight in the UFC, White, a close friend of Rousey’s, inducted the former champion. “When I famously said women would never fight in the UFC, I had never met Ronda Rousey,” White said Thursday. “I had never met the woman who would change everything. She started by changing my mind; she ended up changing the world. “She broke barriers, smashed records and put together the most dominant run by any athlete that anybody had ever seen in combat sports at the time.” Thursday marked Rousey’s first time taking center stage for the UFC in Las Vegas since Dec. 30, 2016 in a title defeat to Amanda Nunes via knockout in just 48 seconds. Though the loss cluttered the view of many of just what Rousey had accomplished previously, she recorded six of her professional wins — amazingly — in quicker fashion. She defended her UFC title six times, with wins against Bethe Correia, Cat Zingano and Alexis Davis coming in less than 40 seconds. A two-time Olympic judoka for the United States, she was the first US woman to win a medal when she took home bronze in 2008. From the start, she blew through three amateur bouts in a span of six months with a trio of armbar submissions, with each one less than a minute. Rousey’s professional career followed dominant suit as she went 4-0 with armbar submissions coming inside a minute in all of them. She then challenged Miesha Tate for the Strikeforce championship — then the most highly recognized women’s title in the sport. Rousey bested Tate, who would become a career rival, in 4:27 of the first round on March 3, 2012 to claim the championship. She would enjoy a run of 12 straight victories to begin her career and storm to worldwide notoriety. “Ronda put women’s fighting on the map and she blazed a trail for the next generation to follow. Outside the octagon, she was a breakout star like we’d never seen before,” White said. “For millions of young women, Ronda Rousey launched a revolution.” Joining Rousey in the UFC Hall of Fame class was Matt Serra, who famously defeated Georges St. Pierre in a UFC welterweight title upset seen by many as the biggest of all-time. That was challenged when Rousey was finally dethroned. She was upset by Holly Holm on Nov. 14, 2015 in front of the UFC’s largest live crowd ever at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia as a reported 56,214 fans saw Rousey’s reign conclude via head-kick knockout in her second-to-last bout. She returned Thursday as she was joined in the class of 2018 by Serra, Art Davie, Bruce Connal and the classic first fight between Dan Henderson and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. She returned and was bestowed thanks by White and a welcoming crowd. “She inspired [women] to believe in themselves and to dream bigger than they ever had before. She empowered them to fight for what they want in life and refuse to take never for an answer,” he said. “In the history of the UFC, only Ronda transcended the sport and became a cultural icon. …She’s beautiful, she’s brilliant, she’s bad-ass, she’s an Olympian, she’s a UFC game-changer, she’s a UFC Hall of Famer.” But as Rousey made UFC history once more and was adorned by her former boss with praise and accomplishment, her words were those of thanks to the people who paid to watch her change the world. “When someone tells you that something cannot be done, I want you to prove them wrong,” she said. “We have had this incredible journey and it really was an honor to be able to live it with you. “The only reason any of this mattered was because you were watching.” Those were Rousey’s final words and then her husband, UFC heavyweight fighter Travis Browne, slipped her UFC Hall of Fame blazer upon her trailblazing shoulders and she took hold of her UFC Hall of Fame trophy and lifted it high into the air. grant.gordon@latimes.com Twitter: @TCNGrantGordon<doc-sep>
For anyone who didn’t watch Ronda Rousey’s fight career as it happened, it might be impossible to explain what a bolt of lightning she was. Crashing herself down with little forewarning, Rousey jolted heads with an arresting combination of fighting talent and loquaciousness, forced her way into a promotion that had previously held no place for women, and then seemed to disappear as quickly as she arrived. On Thursday night in Las Vegas, she returned to the UFC — one night only — to accept her induction into the organization’s Hall of Fame. Appearing happy and humbled, Rousey received her honor directing the entirety of her five-minute speech to the fans. “You know I’m not a person who usually struggles to find words. From the bottom of my heart my soul, my toes, my entire being, I want to thank you,” she said. “For the first decade of my athletic career, I was at the pinnacle of athletic accomplishment and no one seemed to care. Nothing changed, and then you came along. The only reason why anything that I ever did had any effect on the world is because you took the time to let it affect you. “Words will never express how humbled I am that you gave me the honor of being the person that made all this possible,” she continued. “I’m not the first person who had the ability to do this, but I am here because I’m the first person you took the time to watch.” When the MMA world last saw Rousey, it could hardly draw a word out of her. In December 2016, a year moved from her crushing knockout loss to Holly Holm, she showed up to UFC 207 fight week in silence, went out of her way to avoid any camera or microphone pointed in her direction, and after a 48-second knockout loss to Amanda Nunes, left without offering a goodbye. In some ways, her speech felt like that farewell. Though she offered no specific thanks to anyone aside from the fans — not UFC president Dana White, who inducted her; not her husband Travis Browne; not any of her opponents — she offered a more universal message of fighting in the face of adversity. “Because of you, I am the first woman standing up here accepting this incredible honor,” she said. “May I be the first of many. I look around and think, together we built this, this division, this sport, this revolution. Together we have redefined what it means to be strong, to be sexy. We have changed what it means to ‘fight like a girl.’” Rousey’s entire MMA career lasted just over five years, yet it took her barely a year into the sport to make the impression that would change her life as well as the lives of female pro fighters. In March 2012, Rousey faced her most noted rival, Miesha Tate, in Strikeforce. Less than a year earlier, White had publicly declared that women would never compete in the UFC Octagon, but after watching the match and the excitement surrounding Rousey’s submission win, he became a convert. “Doing this I’ve learned many valuable lessons. One is ‘never say never,’” White said, poking a bit of fun at himself while inducting Rousey. His faith proved well-founded. For the next seven fights, including her Octagon debut against Liz Carmouche in the first-ever women’s UFC bout, Rousey tore through opposition with blinding speed. Aside from her second fight with Tate, who managed to get to the third round in the rematch, Rousey seemed to make it a personal challenge to humiliate her opponents inside of one round, and mostly with her signature armbar submission. While many critics have been critical of her opponent strength of schedule through the benefit of hindsight, such reexaminations seem unfair. After all, during her run, Rousey defeated two former Strikeforce champions (Tate and Sarah Kaufman), an Olympian (2004 freestyle wrestling silver medalist Sara McMann), and longtime top contender Cat Zingano, among others. She finished her career with a record of 12-2, and notched a series of notable UFC firsts, including: first female UFC fighter; first UFC bantamweight champion, first woman to headline a 1 million selling pay-per-view, which she did twice; and now, first female UFC Hall of Famer. She enters the Hall as a member of the Modern Wing, joining Forrest Griffin, B.J. Penn and Urijah Faber.