With Pokémon Champions arriving on April eighth, a enjoyable query for preventing followers is again. Who’s the UFC’s biggest Pokémon fanatic, and does anybody surpass Ronda Rousey’s long-documented obsession?
pokemon champion
Pokémon Champions is a brand new battle-focused title launching on April 8, 2026 on Nintendo Swap and Nintendo Swap 2, utilizing a free-to-start mannequin much like Pokémon Unite. The sport is predicated on core mechanics resembling sorts, talents, and six-Pokémon groups for single and double battles, and helps ranked, informal, and personal on-line modes with optionally available paid bundles and premium battle passes.
Launch day updates improve Nintendo Swap 2’s visuals, and Champions is about to be the primary platform for official Video Sport Championship occasions in 2026.
Pokémon Champions is a strategic and aggressive fight sport. It is constructed across the ordinary turn-based Pokemon battle system. Identical to in mainline RPGs, you construct your group and challenge instructions in single and double battles utilizing sorts, talents, and strikes.
The main target is on on-line player-versus-player competitors with ranked, informal, and personal battles, slightly than arcade-style one-on-one fight like Road Fighter or Tekken. Recruit or import Pokémon, regulate their stats and actions with in-game foreign money, and climb the aggressive ladder towards different gamers in codecs associated to the official Pokémon World Championship and extra.
Lifelong fan of Ronda Rousey
Ronda Rousey’s Pokémon historical past is deeper than only a reference, which is why many see her because the frontrunner for the title of greatest UFC Pokémon fan. In a 2015 Reddit AMA, she revealed that as a young person she was a moderator on GameTalk’s Pokémon Stadium 2 discussion board beneath the deal with “mew182,” and described herself as a “large Pokémon geek.”
She named Mew as her favourite Pokémon and answered detailed questions on hypothetical matchups, together with debating whether or not she’d slightly face a Mew-sized Mewtwo or 100 Mewtwo-sized Mews, and selecting one Mew-sized Mewtwo as a better battle.
Rousey even jokes about how her trademark armbar interacts with Pokemon just like the judo Pokemon Gradual, demonstrating a stage of involvement that goes past simply being a fan of a specific transfer, sort, or character.
Brandon Moreno and the Collector Wave
Former Mexican flyweight champion Brandon Moreno has turn out to be the trendy face of Pokémon in blended martial arts by means of his assortment of playing cards and memorabilia. Throughout his podcast look, Moreno talked about his critical behavior of shopping for and promoting Pokémon playing cards, and revealed that he’s an avid collector even outdoors of the cage.
He spends his downtime in search of uncommon pulls and discussing his favourite playing cards, giving him a special profile than Rousey. It is extra in regards to the bodily buying and selling card side of the franchise than in regards to the discussion board tradition.
However Rousey is in a special league. She hosted a Pokémon discussion board as a young person, used a Pokémon-themed deal with, talked about particular monsters and fictional battles, and remains to be mentioned to be “obsessive about Pokémon” all these years later. Whereas Moreno’s card gathering and media presence make him a serious determine of the present period, the depth of Rousey’s fan base and early-internet nature additional cements her historic declare to be the UFC’s greatest Pokémon fan.
As Pokémon Champions seems to push aggressive fight into a brand new format, the collection’ ties to MMA tradition look set to develop even stronger.
The extremely anticipated showdown between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano is scheduled for a five-round 145-pound featherweight bout sponsored by Most Worthwhile Promotions as Netflix’s first reside MMA principal occasion beneath the unified guidelines of MMA on Might 16, 2026 on the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. Each fighters are getting back from prolonged layoffs, making this a history-defining match between two pioneers of girls’s MMA, which Rousey referred to as “the best superfight in girls’s martial arts historical past,” and will probably be streamed to Netflix subscribers worldwide at no further cost.
