Ronda Rousey (Photo : Instagram)
UFC Women's Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is making sports history by being the first female on the cover of Men's Fitness, Australia edition.
Ronda shared the photo of the magazine's cover in her Instagram account and the post got more than 218,000 likes and almost 2,500 comments. It indicates how popular Ronda has become especially after her last match against Bethe Correia in Brazil whom she beat in 34 seconds.
The cover is in anticipation of attendance records to be broken when Ronda fights Holly Holm on Nov. 14 at UFC 13 in Melbourne's Etihad Stadium. So far, over 40,000 tickets been sold with six weeks until the fight. The venue could accommodate 56,000 fans.
Dana White, UFC president, said the Nov. 14 fight hopes to break the previous record at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Canada, when Georges St-Pierre fought Jake Shields at UFC 129.
Men's Fitness for October is scheduled to be released on Thursday. Several other women celebrities had graced the cover of the U.S. edition of Men's Fitness such as Carmen Electra, Stacy Keibler and Maria Menounos, but Ronda is the first female cover of the magazine's Australia edition, reports News.com.au.
Ronda, 28, is also in Fortune's 40 Under 40 list of people with power, influence, drive and ambition. Explaining her inclusion, Fortune points out that her "utter dominance" in mixed martial arts is a boon to the sport which has enjoyed a rise in popularity.
Her Nov. 14 bout, according to Washington Post, would likely be bigger than Floyd Mayweather's flop Sept. 12 bout versus Haitian boxer Andre Berto which got only about 400,000 pay-per-view buys. Ronda even beat number 1 tennis player Serena Williams as the Best Female Athlete Ever in a recent ESPNW reader survey.
