Ronda Rousey wants to love MMA again so she can leave it
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — There’s a small tree in Ronda Rousey‘s yard stuffed with caterpillars that her 4-year-old daughter frequently checks when she will get residence from faculty. There’s a fenced-in duck pond for poultry, three compost heaps and a cow within the pasture named Myrtle. There’s a quiet canine, Poncho, who does not initially settle for petting from strangers — however will ultimately sneak up and lick their unsuspecting fingers in the event that they keep lengthy sufficient.
The within Rousey’s residence seems just like the acquainted mess of any residence with young children. Sheets of paper together with her daughter’s earliest makes an attempt to write her personal title in marker. Dinosaur popup books. There’s a foolish portray subsequent to the mirror within the toilet, depicting Rousey and her husband, Travis Browne, in leafy clothes within the Garden of Eden, smiling.
What there’s not is a single shred of proof of the cultural and sports activities icon Rousey as soon as was. As if none of it ever occurred.
It’s exhausting to pinpoint precisely when the story of Ronda Rousey and blended martial arts ended. The apparent reply is Dec. 30, 2016, when Amanda Nunes shortly demolished her at UFC 207 in what grew to become her ultimate UFC look. But possibly it was earlier than that. Maybe it was at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2015, when she lined her face with a pillow to keep away from being seen after Holly Holm dealt her the primary lack of her combating profession. Or earlier nonetheless — when battle preparations together with her coach grew to become so poisonous, Rousey’s mom refused to attend her battle in opposition to Holm out of protest.
“I’m not sure there was an end,” Rousey instructed ESPN final month, from the again porch of her residence. “It was all f—ed up. It was like one of those popup books over there, refusing to close.”
Whatever that conclusion was to Rousey and the battle sport, it sucked. It was a bitter divorce. Rousey constructed, in her phrases, “a lot of walls” round her coronary heart, and when she did, a mutual resentment settled in. Fans did not perceive why she appeared so indignant. Rousey did not perceive what they failed to perceive. She believed she had been who the game wanted her to be, given up items of herself and the followers did not admire it. They mentioned she simply could not deal with defeat.
The relationship simply form of died. Somewhat tragically, within the eyes of some.
“You’re an Olympic medalist in judo and the icon of women’s MMA, and you don’t want to talk about it?” Rousey’s shut pal Ricky Lundell remembered questioning. “And if you do talk about it, it’s immediately, ‘I hated that time. I hated what was going on.’
“When you are round that as a pal, it makes you say, ‘Wow, there’s plenty of therapeutic that wants to happen right here.’ But she had closed it off.”
For a long time, it looked as if it would stay that way. Rousey had no desire to tear down the walls between her heart and martial arts. She and Browne, a retired UFC heavyweight, have long wished to move to their own private “oasis” in Hawaii, where Browne was born. Rousey, who has given birth to two daughters and is stepmother to two sons, wants to have more children. The notion of fighting — and even the memories of doing so — were behind her.
“I used to be fully carried out, done-skis,” Rousey said.
But over the past two years, the universe aligned in unexpected ways to bring Rousey and MMA back together. She will face Gina Carano, the original pioneer of women’s MMA, on May 16 in the Intuit Dome Inglewood, California, in the main event of the first MMA card to air on Netflix. The event includes other big names such as Nate Diaz and Francis Ngannou, and is the first MMA card for Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions, but it is undeniably Rousey’s event. She is its origin, the one who initiated and fought for it to happen.
The word “comeback” has inevitably surfaced about the 39-year-old Rousey’s return to competition, but that is not what this is. This is about closure, for a story that never had any.
“This is an opportunity for me to rewrite my ending,” she said.
WHEN ROUSEY RETURNED to her locker room after defeating Sara McMann at UFC 170 in Las Vegas, she immediately laid down and turned off the lights.
A furious 66 seconds in the Octagon had just ended, in which McMann crumpled to the canvas from a Rousey knee to the liver. Before being stopped, McMann was credited with a mere 14 total strikes. It was essentially a flawless performance by Rousey, but she was still disoriented.
“I used to be getting concussion signs, splotches in my imaginative and prescient,” Rousey said. “I barely acquired touched that battle. That was the second the place I began to really feel like, ‘F—, no person can contact me. I would like to end fights earlier than I even get touched.”
Unbeknownst to anyone else, Rousey had dealt with these concussion-like symptoms throughout her transition to MMA. She would lose fields of vision and struggle to track movement. It was getting worse over time. She had a history of head trauma that dated to her judo career and assumed she was merely paying the inevitable costs of that. She was afraid to see a doctor because she already knew what one would say — that she had irreparable brain damage and shouldn’t be fighting anymore.
“I believed I used to be on the highway to CTE and actually did not need to know,” Rousey said. “I used to be type of in denial about it for a very long time, and it lastly caught up with me. It was one cause I by no means talked about my losses, as a result of I did not know what was occurring. I believed I could not battle anymore, and if I could not battle, I did not need to take into consideration it anymore.”
Rousey’s growing fears about her ability to compete and long-term health coincided with a breakdown of her training environment. The close relationship she had forged with head coach Edmond Tarverdyan had started to fray, even during the peak of her success. She says her camps were devoid of any joy and even turned psychologically demanding. Her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, expressed her disgruntlement toward Tarverdyan publicly, but Rousey stuck with him.
“I used to be emotionally babysitting my coach,” Rousey said. “Just continually like, ‘Oh my God, do not put him in a nasty temper. Keep him in a superb temper.’ He had this passive-aggressive means of like, ‘I’m going to make coaching depressing in the event you do not make me completely happy.’ I’d had dysfunctional coach relationships since I used to be a child, I believed it was regular.”
Tarverdyan could not be reached for comment at the time of publishing.
As her relationship with her team was in a valley, Rousey’s fame was reaching its peak.
ESPN named Rousey the 23rd-most famous athlete, and second-most famous women’s athlete, in the world in 2015. During the buildup to her August 2015 knockout of Bethe Correia at UFC 190, Rousey coined the time period “do nothing bitch” on the “UFC Embedded” YouTube series to describe someone she never wished to be. The speech went viral, and Beyoncé used it during a festival appearance the following month. Her popularity was at an all-time high, but between the health concerns and fractures in camp, things were starting to crack behind the scenes.
Perhaps to overcompensate, Rousey turned up her act. She had by no means shied away from prefight confrontations however acted oddly aggressive with Holm forward of UFC 193 in Australia, operating up on Holm throughout an notorious stare-down on the ceremonial weigh-in. Looking again, she was placing on a present.
“I feel it’s unattainable for followers to know anyone they do not personally know, it’s a futile train,” Rousey said. “So, within the place I used to be in, you are actually simply placing up a entrance. I feel I leaned too exhausting into that and created an overexaggerated model of myself.”
When things did break down, there was a full collapse. The loss to Holm was devastating, and an ensuing year of virtual silence by Rousey alienated her from the rest of the sport. When she returned to face Nunes in December 2016, she was barely there. The fight was over in 48 seconds.
ROUSEY’S MMA RECONCILIATION didn’t begin until early 2025 — and only then because of her friend, Lundell.
Lundell is a master in the grappling world, having instructed everyone from UFC athletes to amateur wrestlers to Navy SEALs.
“I actually did really feel it was a travesty,” said Lundell, of Rousey’s despondency toward MMA. “It was one thing she liked so a lot and carried out since childhood. To have the affect on the sport that she’d had — to be liked at some point, hated the following — that is rather a lot for an individual to tackle.
“A few years ago, I was heavily in prayer, and I was told I should go ask Ronda to help me work on my black belt in judo.”
Rousey, who was pregnant together with her second daughter on the time, agreed. She and Lundell began coaching judo as soon as every week, normally in Rousey’s storage. And in that setting, the place there was no expectation or strain, she discovered her love for martial arts again.
At one level, Browne walked into the storage to see his pregnant spouse enthusiastically demonstrating a “death row” right into a “crash pad” to Lundell and had to shut it down.
“He was like, ‘Babe, you have to stop, no more suplexing people while you’re pregnant,'” Rousey mentioned. “But it was this little thing that chipped away at the wall I’d put up.”
Later that yr, Mike Tyson boxed Jake Paul at AT&T Stadium on Netflix. Rousey initially discovered the entire occasion “stupid” and did not watch, however she was shocked by how large it grew to become. Netflix introduced 108 million folks watched Paul defeat a 58-year-old Tyson, and the numbers struck a chord.
“People missed what Mike Tyson brought to the table,” Rousey mentioned. “They missed that feeling that he gave them, and it didn’t matter that he was almost 60. If he could do it, why couldn’t I? And I’m a lot younger than 60.”
Around the identical time, Rousey noticed an interview on tv that featured Carano, the girl who as soon as impressed her to start MMA. Rousey’s life lacked route following the 2008 Olympic Games till she noticed Carano competing in MMA. Now, all these years later, she felt Carano seemed unhealthy and sad, issues she had felt on the finish of her UFC profession. During that troublesome time, Rousey had the WWE to lean into, the place she discovered one thing to do throughout two stints in 2018 and 2022. Maybe Carano wanted one thing related.
It struck her then that they wanted to battle. Rousey believed Carano seemed like somebody who might use function. And Rousey wanted a unique ending. Maybe she had at all times wanted it, and this was the primary alternative at it. That guide that had refused to shut accurately in 2016, this might lastly be a means to shut it.
As she started to pursue her ending, she realized that she wanted to perceive the concussion signs she had averted. At the urging of UFC CEO Dana White, Rousey visited the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, the place she was formally recognized with migraine with aura and cortical spreading melancholy (CSD). Migraine with aura can trigger imaginative and prescient signs reminiscent of flashing lights and blind spots in addition to pounding complications, dizziness and different intense migraine signs. CSD is a rarer situation that can manifest in aura-like signs when triggered by traumatic mind damage.
According to Dr. John Neidecker of the Association of Ringside Physicians, CSD signs can linger for weeks and months after a traumatic mind damage and can be particularly extreme in folks with a historical past of migraines. Dr. Charles Bernick on the Cleveland Clinic assured Rousey that almost all of her signs stemmed from migraines and he didn’t detect everlasting injury to her mind. And, he mentioned, the analysis is treatable with medicine. Not solely did she be taught she’d be medically cleared to battle, however it would additionally truly be safer for her to return than she had thought beforehand.
“The more I thought about it, I was like, ‘Damn, I really f—ing need this,'” Rousey mentioned. “It was the first time I felt excited about it again.”
THERE’S A SMALL TOWN someplace in rural Hawaii, the place Rousey and Browne acquired married in August 2017, eight months after her ultimate UFC battle. Rousey has by no means divulged its title.
Although she was much less within the public eye by then, she remembers paparazzi descending on the island that week, attempting to seize pictures of her marriage ceremony.
“They were offering $50,000 for information and got completely iced out,” Rousey mentioned. “Everybody was like, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ The community protected me. Ever since, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is where I need to raise my kids.”
They already personal land within the space, and plan to transfer as quickly as this battle is over. Perhaps they’re going to disappear, though Rousey is now tempted by the considered changing into a promoter.
The indisputable fact that her ultimate look will happen on MVP with Netflix — and never the UFC and White — was not by preliminary design. Rousey wished to have her ultimate battle with White, however mentioned the UFC wasn’t keen to pay what she thought of honest compensation. She wants to break the document $5 million purse that boxer Amanda Serrano set for girls’s fight sports activities final yr and says it would not have occurred within the UFC.
Rousey has accused the UFC’s company construction, particularly chief monetary officer Hunter Campbell, for serving shareholders over the nice of the game. She doesn’t blame White, whom she nonetheless considers a pal and believes was overruled when it got here to the UFC’s choice to move on her battle with Carano. The UFC declined to be interviewed for this story.
Rousey believes she’s in a singular place, particularly with Netflix as an ally, to elicit some sort of change within the UFC. Even if she solely catches the corporate’s consideration, that alone might go a great distance with any MMA followers who agree together with her message that the UFC has began to flip right into a soulless model of its outdated self.
“Some of the people over there pissed off the wrong woman,” Browne laughed. “The thing about it is that she’s not wrong. I think it’s great and lifts the whole sport, when you have one of the greatest prizefighters of the UFC now promoting against them.”
Perhaps that is a battle Rousey will settle for past this weekend. It seems to be the one battle left, as she’s repeatedly mentioned she would not have returned in any respect have been it not for her respect for Carano. Her admiration for Carano is so nice, in reality, Rousey does not worry the potential sting of a loss that may have devastated her prior to now.
“If there is any person in the world that I would want to steal my joy and walk around with it, it would be Gina,” she mentioned.
Win or lose, that is the tip for Rousey as a fighter. It isn’t the tip for Rousey and MMA. Even if she does not pursue the promoter route, she’s eager about opening a children’ academy in Hawaii sometime. The concept of dwelling on the mats, experiencing and sharing her pleasure of martial arts with others, may be very interesting to her again.
In that sense, there nonetheless will not be an finish to Rousey’s MMA story as a result of there’ll by no means be an finish to her relationship with it. And that could be a much better conclusion than the one she’s had.
