Given the star power and attention she received while fighting, it’s almost impossible to comprehend that Ronda Rousey’s entire UFC career actually lasted less than four years.
During that span, Rousey fought eight times, defended her UFC title six times, and became one of the biggest stars in the history of the sport. Rousey was so busy being the face of women’s MMA that UFC CEO Dana White believes it actually cost her when it came time to evolve as a fighter.
“While she was doing what she was doing, building the sport and the UFC and women, all these other women were training to beat her,” White said back in June. “She had taken so much on her shoulders at the time, it was literally impossible for her to keep growing as a fighter during that period.”
Reacting to White’s comments, Rousey said she tried put the sport on her back upon first arriving in the UFC, but also knows those choices were her own.
Rousey said she told White specifically that she’d do everything in her power to prove him right after becomig the catalyst that ushered women into UFC for the first time.
“I had to be everything to everyone,” Rousey told CBS Sports. “I had to promote as hard as I trained, and because I did that, that’s why we got as far as we are today. I didn’t just make it about me and my performances and picking and choosing my fights, about when it would work best for me. That’s why we were so successful. That’s why the sport had never been hotter. It was because of that work.
“I promised Dana that’s what I would do if he believed in me and invested in me and brought me into the company. I felt like if I did anything less, that would have made me a liar.”
Beyond her duties promoting and fighting whenever UFC asked, Rousey has said she was also dealing with lingering effects of concussions suffered throughout her athletic career. Since retiring from UFC and putting her pro wrestling career on hold, Rousey revealed for the first time that repeated concussions played a big part in her decision to stop fighting.
Her concussion history also played into why Rousey never mentioned the subject after her final UFC fight against Amanda Nunes in 2016, because she was already plotting for a future in WWE. Once fighting and wrestling were done, Rousey finally spoke out about her concussion history, which started when she was involved with swimming as a child.
“If the concussions weren’t an issue, things would have happened completely differently [in my fight career],” Rousey said. “Cumulative neurological injury is something people just don’t talk about in MMA, which is also something everybody is dealing with at a different pace. I started dealing with it at 6 years old, I started getting concussions.”
Even if she didn’t have plans for pro wrestling after her MMA career was done, Rousey suspects she probably still wouldn’t have addressed her struggles while still active in UFC.
“As a fighter, you’re not supposed to show any weakness or talk about things like that or the inevitable neurological decline that comes with taking head shots,” Rousey said. “A lot of people talk about it as if it’s making excuses or weakness or things like that, but I have the whole rest of my life to think about. You never know when you take one hit too many until many decades later, but also, I don’t think that I would be serving the sport or the division in the right way if I had stuck around too long. I got to a point where I knew that I could literally not be taking those head impacts and continue to compete at that same level.
“It doesn’t do the sport any favors. It’s a bad look on women’s MMA in general and I am the representative of that sport. You see that happen to a lot of fighters as they age, and it takes less and less and less to be able to hurt them and for them to get knocked out. And it’s not just them losing matches — those are their brains getting injured, that is going to hurt them later on in their life and they end up getting punch drunk or slurring or they’re in wheelchairs and all this stuff. Nobody talks about it.”
Now that she’s been such an open book with her own concussion history, Rousey hopes more fighters acknowledge the struggles they’ve faced with similar issues.
“I wish that more people would [address it] because the longevity of our fighters is at stake,” Rousey said. “I want all of these fighters to be able to get old gracefully and be able to hold their grandkids and not to be another of those cautionary tales.”
