With Pokémon Champions Announced, Who is the UFC’s Ultimate Poké-Fan?
Pokémon Champions arriving on April 8 has revived a fun question for fight fans: who is the UFC’s greatest Pokémon diehard, and does anyone top Ronda Rousey’s long-documented obsession?
Pokémon Champions
Pokémon Champions is a new battle-focused title launching on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 on April 8, 2026, using a free-to-start model similar to Pokémon Unite. The game leans on core mechanics like types, Abilities, and six-Pokémon teams in Single and Double Battles, and it will support ranked, casual, and private online modes with optional paid bundles and a premium battle pass.
A launch-day update will enhance visuals on Nintendo Switch 2, and Champions is slated to become the main platform for official Video Game Championships events in 2026.
Pokémon Champions is a strategy and competitive battling game. It is built around the usual turn-based Pokémon battle system: you assemble teams and issue commands in Single and Double Battles using types, Abilities, and moves, much like the mainline RPGs.
The focus is online player‑versus‑player competition, with Ranked, Casual, and Private Battles rather than arcade-style 1v1 combat like Street Fighter or Tekken. You recruit or import Pokémon, tune their stats and moves with an in‑game currency, and then climb a ladder against other players, including in formats linked to the official Pokémon World Championships.
Ronda Rousey’s lifelong fandom
Ronda Rousey’s Pokémon history runs deeper than a passing reference, which is why many view her as the leading candidate for the title of biggest UFC Pokémon fan. In a 2015 Reddit AMA, she revealed that as a teenager she moderated a Pokémon Stadium 2 forum on GameTalk under the handle “mew182,” describing herself as a “big-time Pokémon nerd.”
She has named Mew as her favorite Pokémon and has answered detailed hypothetical matchup questions, including debating whether she would rather face a Mew-sized Mewtwo or 100 Mewtwo-sized Mews, picking the single Mew-sized Mewtwo as the smarter fight.
Rousey has even joked about how her trademark armbar would interact with Pokémon like Throh, the Judo Pokémon, showing a level of engagement with specific moves, types, and characters that goes beyond casual fandom.
Brandon Moreno and the collector wave
Mexico’s former flyweight champion Brandon Moreno has become the modern face of Pokémon in MMA through his card and memorabilia collection. In podcast appearances, Moreno has talked about a serious habit of buying and trading Pokémon cards, presenting himself as a committed collector outside the cage.
He spends downtime hunting rare pulls and discussing favorite cards, giving him a different profile from Rousey: less about forum culture and more about the physical trading-card side of the franchise.
But Rousey stands apart: she moderated a Pokémon forum as a teenager, uses a Pokémon-themed handle, has talked about specific monsters and hypothetical fights, and still gets referenced years later as “Pokémon-obsessed.” Moreno’s card collecting and media presence make him the leading figure of the current era, but the depth and early-internet nature of Rousey’s fandom give her a stronger historical claim to being the UFC’s biggest Pokémon fan.
With Pokémon Champions about to push competitive battling into a new format, the franchise’s bond with MMA culture looks set to grow.
Ronda Rousey’s long-awaited showdown with Gina Carano is set for May 16, 2026, in a five-round featherweight bout at 145 pounds at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, under the Unified Rules of MMA and promoted by Most Valuable Promotions as Netflix’s first live MMA main event. Both women are returning from lengthy layoffs, framing the fight as a legacy-defining meeting between two pioneers of women’s MMA that Rousey has called “the biggest super fight in women’s combat sport history,” with the bout streaming worldwide to Netflix subscribers at no extra charge.
