The UFC is championing this season of its “Ultimate Fighter” reality show as historic. It’ll be the first time females will compete for a six-figure contract with the mixed martial arts organization and they’ll be sharing a house with their male counterparts – think “The Real World” if the stars had to step into a cage every week and punch each other in the face.
Ronda Rousey, the show’s featured attraction, isn’t nearly as enthusiastic about the start of the season.
“I feel like it’s going to be a blow to me and my image,” Rousey told The Post.
The UFC women’s champion wasn’t happy about her every action being documented for the 18th season of the hit series, which premieres Wednesday night (FOX Sports 1, 10 p.m.). Rousey will be coaching a team of young fighters against another squad coached by her bitter rival Miesha Tate.
“I’m a very unrestricted, unedited person and they put me in a hostile environment,” Rousey said. … “I’m a person that doesn’t operate well while being restrained. I’m gonna do some crazy s— and people aren’t going to know why, because [the producers] can’t explain it.”
Rousey said that there were times during filming that she was mad at everyone – the UFC, FOX, the crew – “for trying to f— with me for their own personal benefit.”
The only people she wasn’t angry with was her team, which was the only reason she agreed to do the show in the first place. As the first female champion in UFC history, Rousey, 26, wanted to help pass the torch to other aspiring women athletes.
Rousey says she took her coaching duties very seriously, growing close to the men and women she was training.
“I’d kill for those kids,” Rousey said. “I’d die for those kids.”
She certainly doesn’t need the show to increase her profile. Right now, Rousey is in Bulgaria filming “The Expendables 3” with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a host of other action luminaries. When she’s done there, the California native heads to Atlanta to shoot “The Fast and the Furious 7” with Vin Diesel and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
To cap a wild year that started when she kicked off the UFC’s women’s division in February with a win over Liz Carmouche, Rousey defend her title against Tate in December. Rousey took Tate’s Strikeforce title in 2012 before the UFC included female fighters and the two have talked trash and exchanged expletives often since then.
Being in close contact with her most hated foe on “The Ultimate Fighter” didn’t sit well with Rousey either. But like a hapless opponent, the undefeated star and former Olympic judo medalist is just tossing those feelings aside.
“One little reality show season isn’t going to break me,” she said. “So many worse things have happened. Even if they show me running around in a thong with mayo all over myself, I wouldn’t care.”
To be clear, that didn’t actually happen. Other things did, though, and Rousey is certain those incidents will make her look nuts to a television audience.
“I assume it’s going to be the absolute f—ing worst,” she said.