Arguably the most famous mixed martial arts fighter ever, “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey plans her comeback after being unseated as UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion last year
By Matt Scanlon
Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, has done a singular job of branding today’s concept of mixed martial arts (MMA), and even though that term itself was likely coined by television critic Howard Rosenberg back in 1993, it would apply equally well to a variety of mixed-style contests that took place in Europe and the Pacific Rim during the early 20th-century. The first MMA league in the U.S. was started by CV Productions Inc. in 1980, then named Tough Guy Contest, and later Battle of the Superfighters. CV’s rollout strategy for the sport (essentially full-contact combat that permits wrestling-like grappling and boxing/martial arts-like striking) included sanctioning 10 tournaments in Pennsylvania, but that state’s senate passed a bill in 1983 prohibiting the sport, not least because of what it perceived to be its inherent dangers.
Though there are and have been a number of sponsoring leagues—including Invicta Fighting Championships and Strikeforce—it was UFC that held the first championship of national scope at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado in November of 1993. Broadcast on pay-per-view, the eightman tournament (the winner receiving $50,000) was also notable for its mere two rules: no biting or eye gouging.
Just 23 years after its founding, mixed martial arts is a nationwide phenomenon, and has attracted billions of dollars in ticket sales and pay-per-view fees, but even open-minded enthusiasts would admit that, in the majority of its presentations, this used to be principally a guy thing. To be sure, there have been women’s leagues for more than a decade, but until the appearance of a 5’7″, 135 lb. Riverside California native by the name of “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey and her impressive 68-inch reach, XY and MMA were letters that appeared together comparatively rarely. A bronze medal winner in judo at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, is a 7thdegree black belt and 1984 World Judo Champion), Rousey was searching for new challenges in the wake of an athletic career that seemed stalled. While doing odd jobs to make ends meet and lamenting a skill set that seemed to have few applications (“Throwing people down and putting them in armbars aren’t really skills you can put on a resume,” as IMBD put it), purely by happenstance, she saw an MMA bought between Gina Carano and Julie Kedzie, was inspired, and began training in earnest for the sport in 2010. She appeared in a number of amateur bouts over the next year and made her professional debut in March of 2011, when she defeated the highly favored Brazilian Ediane “India” Gomes…in 25 seconds.
“MMA was [an expression of ] my independence,” Rousey explained at a press conference prior to a 2014 bout with Sara McMann (which she won). “When I said I wanted to do it, my judo coach said that I could go screw myself and my mom told me that it was the most stupid thing she’d ever heard…that ‘You’re not going to make any money off of it.’ It was very much me versus the world. I wanted to prove everyone wrong, and that’s what made me motivated.”
Even with her amateur athlete medal winning bona fides, at first, Rousey and her model-like visage were dismissed as simply a marketing effort to make MMA palatable to wider audiences, but by 2015, 12 professional wins later, and with the UFC’s Women’s Bantamweight Championship belt around her waist at the age of 28, she not only became arguably the sport’s most prominent representative, but the third most searched person on Google for the whole of 2015. That early August title bout, by the way, was against another Brazilian fighter, Bethe Correia, and this time, Rousey required just 34 seconds to win.
Though she didn’t invent the move, Rousey’s application of the armbar is legendary—in which, after tackling an opponent, she traps that fighter’s arm between her own legs and forces it back at the elbow. Controversial for its capacity to snap a limb if applied too aggressively, it was used by Rousey to beat Cat Zingano in February of 2015 in an astonishing 14 seconds. Currently the #5-ranked female MMA fighter in the world by MMARising.com, Zingano was even-money with Rousey at the time, and her defeat sent shock waves through the industry.
The attention also drew TV and movie producers, and Rousey was featured in the Patrick Hughes-directed The Expendables 3 in 2014, then last year in the films Entourage and Furious 7, along with dozens of interview appearances on shows like Entertainment Tonight, Live! with Kelly, and Good Morning America…even a hosting turn on Saturday Night Live.
“There’s quite a few UFC champions, and quite a few action stars, but no boths,” as Rousey put it at the same 2014 press conference—but it looked for all the world as if she had nabbed that first ever duality.
Then came Holly Holm, and a November, 2015 contest that, even eight months later, shadows the fighter. In a title defense match, she was pitted against the 5’8″, 135- pound Albuquerque native in
Melbourne Australia, and at the conclusion of two rounds of lopsided battling, Rousey was eliminated after she received a vicious kick to the head. She lost her championship.
“[When I was] first hit, I cut open my mouth and knocked my teeth loose,” Rousey recalled during an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “Guys can fight for five five minute rounds and just tee off on each other’s faces and nothing happens like that. From [that moment], it was me hiding the fact that, in one way, I wasn’t there anymore.”
“In the medical room after,” she continued. “I asked, ‘What am I if I’m not this? Nothing. What do I do anymore? No one gives a shit about me anymore without this,’” adding to DeGeneres that she’d even briefly considered suicide.
There have been no contests since, even as Miesha Tate went on to take the title from Holm. There was some hope that Rousey would fight at November’s UFC 205 event here in New York City, but the latest word is that she’s simply not ready. UFC President Dana White, in a June interview on FOX’s SportsCenter, said that, “She feels great, her spirits are great, she’s been training, so if she fights, I’m hoping she fights in December, if not…the New Year’s show. [And] if Miesha Tate’s still the champion, she’ll fight Miesha. Whoever has the belt is who Ronda will fight.”
Even if the MMA door stays shut for a time, the movie portal is open. This spring, it was announced that Rousey will star in a remake of the 1989 Patrick Swayze film Road House, about a bouncer at a rowdy bar. At the helm will be Nick Cassavetes, who directed The Other Woman and My Sister’s Keeper, and Rousey reportedly sought permission from the Swayze’s widow, Lisa Niemi, before agreeing to take the lead.
“It is a great honor to play a part in celebrating the life of a man that inspired so many,” she offered in a Twitter statement. “I couldn’t be more grateful…I promise to work incessantly to make sure this project is a tribute his family and friends can be proud of.”
