Fight queen
Ronda Rousey’s journey in the ring is a lesson in excellence and excess on and off the mat
RONDA “Rowdy” Rousey became the first female superstar of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). She punched and jabbed her way to back-to-back victories from December 2012 to November 2015 until she stepped in the ring with another lady savage, one Holly “The Preacher’s daughter” Holm. And with Holm’s first brutal kick to the side of superstar Rousey’s head in the second round, the long undefeated champ was out cold.
With a bloody mouth, loosened teeth and her lip cut to the muscle, Rousey came to, facing the realization that her winning streak was over in late 2015. And hearing the rabid UFC fans who long idolized her now cheering for her opponent, she believed her life was over.
Simply put, she wanted to end it all.
“Dying would have felt better than this. I wanted to swallow a bottle of painkillers, close my eyes and end it . . . This was the worst moment of my life,” Rousey, now 37, confesses in her latest hard-hitting memoir, “Rousey, Our Fight” (Grand Central), which she co-wrote with her sister Maria Burns Oritz.
After the loss to Holm, Rousey — who won a bronze medal in the 2008 Summer Olympics — admits that she got loaded on wine and marijuana and consumed large amounts of chocolate, ducking the paparazzi and sobbing, overcome with “staggering grief ” and “inescapable emptiness.”
But she made time to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” where she publicly admitted her suicidal feelings and soaked up applause she believes inspired her to try for a comeback.
It was December 2015. Rousey’s opponent was the Brazilian mixed martial arts champ Amanda Nunes. Just 48 seconds into the battle, Rousey was knocked out.
As she candidly observes, “All I had ever known was being a fighter. It was my entire identity. I had been fighting since the moment I was born.”
Actually, Rousey reveals, she was born near death — with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and not breathing. It would take years of speech therapy for her to learn how to talk.
When she was 8, her father, her hero, committed suicide. He had been in a serious sledding accident, broke his back and there was little hope for a full recovery. Without him, young Ronda was devastated.
At age 11, Rousey began studying judo. But she suffered frequent concussions, resulting in spotted vision, tingling fingertips and buzzing teeth. Rousey writes that her coach, whom she identifies as Jimmy Pedro, slammed her into the mat, threw her into the benches and left her with a dislocated jaw.
“Was he making me tough or was it really abuse?” Rousey wonders. It definitely felt like abuse. And she concludes, “Every coach I ever had was kind of an asshole.”
But the physicality also “ignited a primal rage that made me fight back and want to fucking kill them,” she says. “I pushed myself to the point where I was willing to beat someone within an inch of their life with my bare hands.”
There was also a period in her life, she writes, when she was part of an upstate New York fight club where “drinking, partying, and bed hopping” was part of the scene.
She next segued into mixed martial arts, where she became a champion again.
She had also fallen in love with a bear of a man, Travis Browne, the top UFC heavyweight contender.
The 6-foot-7, 254-pound mixed martial arts champ eventually proposed and Rousey writes her life goals morphed into pursuing happiness that curiously included smoking weed, and playing video games with her man.
But even with this good life, she missed the excitement of the ring and the sound of applause and joined WrestleMania, Vince McMahon’s successful WWE extravaganza and what she calls its heavily scripted storylines — a soap opera with choreographed moves and imaginary championships. Still, Rousey felt like she could do this forever with never-ending live shows and TV specials that got her home long enough to grab a change of clothing and kiss Travis hello and goodbye.
But the wrestling novelty wore off when the champ tired of being treated like an action figure by McMahon, whom she describes as “a geriatric millionaire — spending a few million on hush money to pay off a paralegal used for blow jobs.”
McMahon is currently under federal investigation for allegations of sexual misconduct, according to reports.
Meanwhile, Rousey realized she had become consumed by WWE’s glitzy world of rhinestones, dramatic makeup and applause.
“Applause is a hell of a drug and I had become an addict,” writes Rousey.”
She exited the WWE, celebrating by smoking a “pre-rolled fattie” with Snoop Dogg and settled down with Travis on their ranch in Riverside, Calif., raising Wagyu cattle along with chickens, donkeys, dogs and goats.
They live with his two sons from a previous marriage and their daughter.
Rousey is now working on a screenplay and her podcast.
“The present was finally enough,” she writes.