In the last month or so, Ronda Rousey has been in the MMA news in a way she hasn’t been in years. With a new book that came out at the beginning of April, she’s been making the interview circuit.
When Rousey has been willing to sit down, she’s always been willing to speak her mind without restraint. In that sense, she’s a dream to interview, a soundbite just about every time.
There has been no shortage of hot takes from the UFC’s initial women’s champion. Having just retired from professional wrestling last year, Rousey threw her former employer, Vince McMahon under the bus in the extreme.
That isn’t much of a surprise given the horrid allegations that have come out about the billionaire, but she also crapped on the organization itself, claiming it to be a “shit show” at the world’s largest wrestling organization.
She also blamed her loss to Holly Holm on concussions she suffered in her judo career.
In her most recent interview, Rousey turned her wrath back on the MMA community that brought her to national prominence in the first place.
In her most recent interview with Chris Cuomo, Rousey went off on the MMA media, naming Joe Rogan specifically as someone who turned their back on her. She also lamented that many declared she was making excuses for her loss to Holly Holm and concluded that the MMA media hates her.
Is she right?
This is a complicated issue to unpack. In some respects, Rousey is right. In other respects, Rousey couldn’t be further from the truth.
For instance, if Rousey is referring to MMA fans, I know many fans who celebrated her downfall. But I can’t say I’m aware of any journalists or media members who were celebrating.
I saw many who declared Rousey didn’t handle her loss to Holm well, which didn’t bode well for her return match against Amanda Nunes, which in turn led to numerous predictions Rousey wouldn’t succeed in her lone attempt to regain her title. But there weren’t celebrations.
The distinction between fans and media members is hardly the only factor though. Rousey has either misunderstood or completely ignored one of the more common tropes known throughout the world: The bigger the are, the harder they fall.
In the literal sense, Rousey isn’t a large woman. But in terms of stardom, MMA had never had a star as big as Rousey. As high as Rousey climbed, the inevitable fall that was to come was going to be exceptionally hard.
Some people just want to see those who are successful fall. Others never cared for Rousey’s cocky attitude. Others didn’t necessarily celebrate her downfall, but did celebrate that they had seen something amazing when Holm upturned the apple cart.
Regardless, Rousey had only been celebrated to the extreme after her previous MMA fights. After losing her title, Holm was being celebrated.
Given Rousey lost in a non-competitive manner, it was easy for fans and media members to point out what she did wrong in her loss to Holm. They were problems that were readily apparent earlier, but one had to really be paying attention given the short nature of most of Rousey’s contests up to that point.
Eight of her previous twelve MMA fights lasted 66 seconds or less and only one had ever left the first round. When Holm was able to expose her, it was the same as declaring the emperor had no clothes.
In terms of her relationship with fans and the media, Rousey did herself no favors with how she carried herself in the aftermath of her loss. She should be forgiven for not speaking to the media immediately after her loss to Holm by those who were upset with her for that.
Whether she had a history of concussions heading into that contest, she certainly had one afterward. But in the months (and months) that followed?
Rousey knew the media and fans wanted to hear from her following the loss. We had questions.
How did she feel after the loss? Would she be taking a break? After it became obvious she was taking a break, did she want a rematch with Holm or did she want to regain her title? Would she be making any changes in her camp or training? What sort of strategic changes would she make?
Instead of facing up to the obligations every other MMA fighter would be forced to deal with, Rousey hid. Rousey’s media engagements were incredibly limited and none of them involved MMA media.
When it was announced she was going to be facing Amanda Nunes for the title at UFC 207, Rousey was able to skip out on all media obligations with the exception of face offs. She was being given preferential treatment by the UFC, no doubt at her request.
If Rousey was looking for fan adulation, demanding preferential treatment was the last thing she should have done. It created a lot of resentment among the fans that the deck was being stacked in her favor, even amongst some who had rooted for her in her rise to the top. Thus, those with a rooting interest against her grew... especially in the media.
I can’t say positively that a wide swath of media members were rooting against her, but I do know there are times when media members choose not to hide their bias.
Given Rousey avoided media and the UFC focused all the promotion on her as opposed to the reigning champion Nunes, it was hard not to feel some resentment towards Rousey. There were some who openly expressed their hope for a Rousey win, but many more who voiced their opinion she was going down.
When Rousey lost to Nunes, it only made things worse for Rousey. Even though Nunes was able to benefit from seeing Holm chew up Rousey and spit her out, Rousey didn’t do anything different.
She rushed Nunes without any sort of defensive thought and was blasted immediately. Given the UFC had given Rousey the advantage of not having to participate in media duties, many fans found it humorous the UFC’s “chosen one” couldn’t get the job done.
One of the aspects that Rousey is ignoring is she turned her back on the media. I get that she didn’t want to answer tough questions, but the media’s job is to ask questions.
Particularly the tough questions.
The fans wanted to know Rousey’s thoughts and the media would have loved to have shared that with the public. Rousey refused to let them do that aspect of their job.
I’ve already established Rousey is right to a degree that the media turned on her, but she’s neglecting the role she played in them turning on her. It was unreasonable for her to expect them to sing her praises after she lost, but her recent comments insinuate that’s exactly what she expected.
To give Rousey the benefit of the doubt, it would be hard to transition from constant love and praise the media showered her to the hard and heavy criticism that came her way.
Given all the nationally televised interviews and movie roles that were swirling around her prior to the loss, she can be forgiven for believing they were friends as opposed to professionals looking to get on her good side. She wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake, nor is she the last.
One would expect having gone through that experience, Rousey might have approached her WWE career a little differently. Unfortunately, that played out in an eerily similar fashion to her MMA career.
Rousey entered the WWE with a lot of hype. Her character work needed a lot of work, but her in-ring work was far beyond what anyone expected from someone of her experience level.
The word was that Rousey was soaking up all she could from the veterans, resulting in her being one of the first women to headline Wrestlemania just 14 months after making her full-time WWE debut.
Rousey went on a maternity leave after her Wrestlemania main event, suffering some miscarriages before giving birth to a daughter in the fall of 2021. When Rousey returned to the WWE in January 2022, she made an immediate splash, winning the Royal Rumble.
However, there was a different feel from the audience, as well as Rousey herself. The vibe from the audience was that Rousey was being forced on them in a character that felt at odds with Rousey, both as a person and as a performer. She did recently offer a quote to Rachel Hollis that was quite the insight:
“I just want to go out and have fun. That’s kind of what got lost I think because it snowballed into being about the women’s division and trying to elevate everybody. I had to check myself when it got to the point of, ‘Okay, this company isn’t going to work with me to create something great and I’m just an action figure on their board.’”
Given her MMA status, it’s hard to believe Rousey didn’t have a greater say in her creative direction than others. I can’t say 100% for sure that this is the case, but it sounds like the company was looking to pull Rousey from the championship spotlight based on the fan reaction and Rousey didn’t take too kindly to that.
In professional wrestling, given its scripted nature, if the crowd isn’t buying it, the company has no choice but to go in a different direction. Rather than have some internal reflection, Rousey appears to have decided the WWE higher ups didn’t know anything and blast them after leaving the company.
Rousey may not have left MMA by blasting the UFC, but she certainly left under a cloud... just like she did the WWE. Of course, that’s just my interpretation.
To be fair, I don’t have the time to do justice to the deep dive needed to go into the entirety of the Rousey situation. I don’t want to throw her under the bus, especially when she believes that’s all the MMA media is doing.
She has her perspective and she’s entitled to it. However, that perspective involves her disagreeing with the vast majority of media, both on the MMA and professional wrestling side of things. However, the members of the media also are entitled to disagree with her... and disagreement doesn’t coincide with hate.
To close the article, there’s a couple of things I want to emphasize. First, I wish Rousey no ill-will. She appears to be happy with her husband, former UFC heavyweight Travis Browne. They have their daughter as well as Browne’s children from his previous marriage.
I hope she is happy, even if I disagree with most of her perspectives.
Secondly, there’s a phrase I learned back in high school that has served me well throughout my life. It can be altered some to fit a particular situation – as I feel it would need to be in this case – but I believe it can be applied in this case: “When everyone everywhere you go is an asshole, maybe you’re the asshole.”
To clarify, I’m not calling Rousey an asshole, but there is something to reading the room.
Ronda Rousey exhibited all the signs and symptoms of PTSD from being knocked out on the largest stage of her entire life, knowing that multiple media outlets were going to literally chase her down to get her to talk about something she utterly lacked the coping skills for.
More fighters, like Alexander Volkanovski, are starting to speak out about the traumatic psychological damage that losing in dramatic fashion under the brightest spotlights can have on a person, especially one accustomed to winning, and I think the writers at Bloody Elbow are exactly the sort to take this new topic and break ground on both the history (tragic history of fighters like Evan Tanner) and the possible future (Performance Institute to utilize PTSD therapy?).
"hasn’t been in years over the last few years." I'm sorry, but this is really bad and clunky writing. Based on this and your past output, I'm assuming that English isn't your first language. If that's the case I understand completely.