Rousey: 'Expendables' role won't impede UFC 168 camp; Tate to train with judoka

LOS ANGELES – UFC women’s bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey soon will fly halfway around the world to begin filming her role in “The Expendables 3.”

She said she won’t, however, lose a step in her training camp for her rematch against Miesha Tate at UFC 168, which takes place Dec. 28 at UFC 168 in Las Vegas. 

“I’m leaving soon and I’m very fortunate that there’s going to be Victor Ortiz and Randy Couture and other fighter-type people there, and I’m going to be able to have my camp come and do everything, so I’m not going to break training for it at all,” Rousey told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) on the second stop of the UFC’s current “World Tour” at Club Nokia at L.A. Live in Los Angeles. 

Leaving the country for Bulgaria, where filming reportedly takes place, will help her avoid another activity – watching herself on “The Ultimate Fighter 18.” The women’s champ leads a squad of male and female UFC hopefuls opposite Tate, who also was in attendance at the press conference. 

“TUF 18? debuts Sept. 4 on FOX Sports 1, though a preview for the show is public and already has drawn strong reactions from both competitors. 

Rousey said she recently watched it and turned the sound off. Tate, who saw the preview this past Saturday at UFC on FOX 8, said “it looked pretty intense.”

“I’m happy I’m going to be out of the country while it’s playing, so hopefully it will blow over by the time I get back,” Rousey said. “It’s just going to show a lot that it’s not my best environment to be in. 

“I was focusing more on being the best possible coach that I could, and if you ask anybody on my team, they will say that they were completely happy with how I was as a coach, and that’s all I really care about. How I came off personally wasn’t really my biggest goal. Miesha might come off better and her hair look better, but my athletes love me more.” 

Although palpable on its own, Rousey and Tate’s enmity was encouraged by the crowd at Club Nokia, which “oohed” with every comment they directed at each other. After Rousey said Tate wouldn’t look her in the eyes, Tate rose to her feet and made a point to do so.

“She has a lot of things I want, but that’s not what makes the rivalry,” Tate said at one point. “It’s the level of disrespect that I’ve always felt. I would say everyone, but Ronda, I don’t have any beef with and have a tremendous amount of respect for, but she just has a way of irritating me, and vice versa.”

Of course, the ex-Strikeforce champ plans to exact revenge. This past weekend, she said she planned to bring a special guest into her camp to ensure she wouldn’t get armbarred again by Rousey.

“Lucie Decosse,” Tate told MMAjunkie.com. “I was just looking people up to see who’s better than Ronda at judo, so that’s basically my mission to find people that are better than her and train with them.”

Tate, though, said training with the 2012 Olympic gold medalist in judo has other benefits, as well. 

“The thing about MMA is that I don’t just love it to try to win,” she said. “Obviously, I want to win, but the reason I fell in love with this sport was something new to learn. So I’m really looking forward to learning some of the art. 

“Obviously, another part of it would be to understand judo from a judo person’s perspective. I just think that was the missing link before, and that’s something I’m going to try to implement in this training camp.”

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