People don't know about this. I had to keep it a secret. Uh, it's really, really difficult. Presenter. Yeah. Rowdy Ronda. Rowdy.

Ronda. You were voted the best female athlete of all time. What was it that made you the person that sits in front of me today?

So when I was a kid, it was tough. My dad, he ended up taking his life when I was eight. And in school, I got picked on a lot. I actually dropped out when I was 16 and moved away from home to train full time. But a lot of the coaches thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best results. My first coach just located my jaw. People don't know about this, but I'll get concussions all the time. And every time you get a concussion, it's easier to get another one. So by the time I got into MMA, I had to be able to finish the person off immediately. It was those experiences that made me the world champion.

And you stacked up a bunch of records, including the fastest ever win, fastest admission, fastest title defense. But then that loss to Holly Holmes.

Yeah, my whole world turned upside down. I had to disappear for a while.

And you decide to move on to the WWE, you don't have nice things to say about it.

Vince McMahon just created a fundamentally sick environment, and I think he still is running the company to this day.

Why? Before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask from you. Two months ago, 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe. We're now down to 69%. My goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Rhonda. When I interview people, I often ask them to tell me the most sort of pertinent first event in their story that went on to shape who they are. And with you, from reading through your story, it's quite clear that the first potentially significant event happened as you were being born.

Yeah, I was born with the umbilical cord around my neck, and I was like a zero on the Apgar scale, which is like the health of a baby when they're born. I was blue, they thought I was dead. It took a while to revive me, and I had some damage from that, some neurological damage which expressed itself as a motor speech disorder called apraxia, which is basically, I would have words formed in my head and try to say it, but there was a kind of disconnect between my brain and my mouth, and it would come out differently than how I said it. So I ended up having to do many years of speech therapy to be able to get over it. And sometimes I struggle a little bit. I've dealt with it well enough where people don't notice, but doing things like pro wrestling promos and stuff, where everybody will scrutinize you for saying a single syllable or not pronouncing every single word perfectly. If I just stuttered like I did just now, or mispronounced something like I did just now in a wrestling promo, I would be hung over it. And so there's little things like that that still express themselves to this day.

Mostly it's not noticeable now.

The umbilical cord was wrapped around your neck. The doctors gave you a zero out of ten in terms of your health. When you were a baby, what age did you learn to speak properly?

I didn't really speak in full, intelligible sentences until I was around five or so.

When they did brain scans, did they notice anything different in your brain at that point because of the umbilical cord, incidentally?

No, no. Never did a brain scan or anything like that. I got tested for deafness for a long time. Autism. Apraxia didn't exist as a diagnosis until after I'd kind of really gotten over it. It was actually like a fan mom and her daughter that brought me a pamphlet and was like, we've heard your story. It's been so inspirational to us. We think what you had is this thing called apraxia. And I was like, oh, my God, this actually fits everything that we experienced perfectly, and we ended up having a walk for a proxy here, I got to meet a bunch of different kids and stuff that were dealing with similar things. But, yeah, it's kind of newer in the field, people being aware of it, but I think that's what made me delve into sports so much, because, you know, with judo especially, you, like, communicate physically with a person. You have to put your hands on another person. You have to talk and interact with that person. And so when I was having a hard time when we moved back to LA, like, really socializing with other kids, sports, specifically judo, made it like a conduit for me to be able to connect with other kids and have something to talk about.

What was home life like for you before the age of ten?

I mean, I thought everything was perfect and awesome. My dad passed when I was eight, though, and I didn't know, but he had broken his back in a sudden accident when we'd first moved to north dakota. And he had, like, a rare blood disorder where he couldn't heal from it. And so he had been receiving diagnoses, basically saying he'd become, like, a paraplegic and then a quadriplegic and eventually die. And we didn't know that he was going through this or dealing with chronic pain or anything like that. So he ended up taking his life when he was. When I was eight, but he'd been going through that for years, but had kept it from us. And so then my whole world turned upside down, and then my mom ended up remarrying a couple years later. And then when I was around 1011 is when we moved to right in the border of Santa Monica and Venice.

Your father had a sledding accident. He's told that he's going to be a quadriplegic soon.

Yes. At some point, he broke his back, and his disease, called Benaretzuhlia syndrome, makes it difficult to clot your blood. It's like a platelet. You know, your platelets are malformed. And so he wasn't able to heal, basically, and they put a rod in his back to try and help it heal, but his spine was just crumbling away. Spine was basically, like, falling apart.

He died by suicide?

Yeah. He said he didn't want our last memories of him to be laying in a bed with tubes running in and out of him. He was in a lot of pain all the time, but didn't like being, you know, doped up on painkillers, so he just wanted to go out his own way.

Did you have any idea that he was suffering at that time?

None at all. Completely kept it from us.

So 1 minute he's there, and then the next minute he's not.

Yeah.

How did you find out that he had died by suicide?

My mom told me. Right. You know, right after it happened.

How does a mother explain that to him? Eight year old child.

I mean, she's a PhD in educational psychology, so very, you know, technically, I guess, you know, she just kind of laid the facts out of this is what happened, and this is what's going on. And we wanted to keep it from you because she said that my dad just wanted us to be kids and not have to worry about it.

She told you the details of his suicide?

Yeah.

What impact does that have on you?

I mean, in the long run, I felt like it just kind of gave me this feeling that even if I feel like everything is okay, that everything can come crashing down at any moment. And I guess I lost any feeling of security, of even when everything is going great, I feel like the ball is about to drop, you know, and that's something that I had to, like, you know, work through till this day. And I feel like mostly I can feel pretty secure with my life and where I'm at, but, yeah, it plagued me for a long time.

You were close to him?

Yeah, I was. Big time daddy's girl. Yeah. Part of the speech therapy was my sisters were talking for me, and so he had to work a little bit of a drive from the house, so he would be in devil's Lake during the week, and we'd come home to Minot on the weekend. And so the speech therapist said I should spend one on one time with a parent so that I'm forced to speak so my sisters can't translate my gibberish for me. And so we would. It'd be me and him during the week, and we'd come home on the weekend. So it was like, you know, my whole world.

It's almost unimaginable for an eight year old to try and process that in reality. And, like, because I think at eight years old, you don't understand the concept of suicide or why, you know, why a human could die by suicide. And at that age. What is the story you tell yourself in the book? You talk about how you would tell yourself that he's just gone away on business and that he's going to return at some point.

Yeah, well, that's the only time that he would really be gone away from the house for extended periods of time because he had a business trip or something. And so that was just kind of like what I told myself to cope for a while, but then I found out later that my grandfather committed suicide as well, so he was a second generation suicide.

Your siblings and your mother, the impact of the loss on your dad, on them, was that noticeable? Did you notice a change in them?

My sisters didn't ever really want to talk about it, and I think, you know, my. Yeah, no one really wanted to talk about it at all. It wasn't, like, the kind of thing that we would bring up all the time.

Your mother at this time, she's a champion in her own right?

Yeah, in everything. She got a perfect score on the sats at 16, graduated college at 19. Then she won the world championships in judo, the first american to ever win the world championships in judo while she was working as a single mother engineer and getting her PhD in educational psychology.

Wow.

Yeah, she's incredible.

When I was reading about her and doing some research on her, she sounds like a little bit of a superwoman. So I went and found I wanted to see her, and I found this picture of her.

Yep, that's mom.

She looks like a badass.

She is the original armbar lady. She actually tore her knees out when she was 17 and had to learn how to win, basically just on the ground. So she was the one that would always win by armbar.

Oh, really?

Yeah. And she kind of, like, taught me how she did it, and, you know, I added to it and learned things as well. But it's become, like, kind of a family heirloom. Is the armbar. Yeah, the family armbar.

I often think that our childhoods and those sort of early formative experiences and the traumas that we experience, they leave fingerprints on us in various ways that follow us for the rest of our lives. For good, for bad, and sometimes for ugly. When you think about those sort of first ten years of your life and the fingerprints it left on you as an adult and the person that sits in front of me today, what are those things that are most sort of ingrained in you from that time of your life?

What's most ingrained in me from being a kid? Well, I think losing a parent is a huge formative event. Have you ever read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell?

No, but I've spoken to him on the podcast. But no, I haven't.

Yeah, well, he mentions that kids that lose a parent before they're ten actually end up being more successful, statistically later in life. And it's like, well, he's the one that delved into his book, but when I was reading it, I'm like, oh, I could see that makes sense in a way. And the apraxia and stuff really pushing me towards sports and being physical and things like that, being the youngest of the sisters, so I was the one that was getting beat on at the house. So it made me tougher and want to constantly be able to prove myself as not just being the little baby, but deserving of respect and stuff like that. And those kind of made me into the kind of kid that would. When I first started swimming, I wanted to win the Olympics. And swimming, when I first started judo, I was like, I just want to win the Olympics and this now. But that was just how encouraging my parents were. You know, if they're like, oh, you want to swim, you can win the Olympics in swimming, you know, and so I was just always fed that expectation that I could do everything.

And at sort of ten years old, you moved to Santa Monica, and you had your first attempt and tri at judo. Is that right?

Yeah. Well, I was swimming here, but I wasn't so much into swimming. It's kind of boring. And I didn't like waking up in the morning and jumping in a cold pool.

I don't blame you.

Yeah. So after a little bit of that, I was like, I want to do something else. And my mom, she trained here in the eighties, back when she did judo. And so she went to go visit a bunch of her old teammates that had all gone and opened up clubs of their own. And I went and tried it, and I remember my first day, I didn't even have a hair tie. My hair was all over the place, crazy. And I was trying to figure out how to do judo. I had the most fun that I ever had. Cause I loved that there was no one way to do it. If it worked, it was right. And it was kind of, like, mentally intriguing. You have to figure it out. You're like, solving a puzzle. You're having a conversation with the other person. And so because it was so mentally engaging, I think that's why I liked it so much. And when I won my first tournament, I got that feeling of winning that I didn't quite get in swimming. I was one of the top kids in the state, but I wouldn't really win swimming meets.

And so first time I won something, I got, like, addicted to that feeling, I guess. So I actually dropped out of school when I was 16 to be able to train and do judo full time and move away from home to train full time.

What was your mother's opinion on you doing judo, seeing as she was a champion in Judo herself? When her daughter turns around and says, mom, I want to do judo, too.

I mean, I can't really say how she felt, but, I mean, I was kind of, like, identified as being, like, a prodigy of judo, judo pretty young, and she wanted to kind of take an outside role of making sure that I was training with all the right people at the right time. She wasn't the person that was on. Like, she, of course, taught me everything that she could, but she didn't really want to be that overbearing coach. Mom on the match was like, you go heritage with this person. You go hero. Chae. That person was like the overarching architecture of my career and everything like that.

You enter your first tournament and you win the tournament with instant wins. Epons. I don't know what an epon is.

Nippon is like if you throw someone flat on their back.

Okay, right. So you win that first tournament, people start considering you to be this child prodigy and judo. What was it about, when you look back on yourself now with all the wisdom you have, what was it about you that made you excel above your peers at judo? What was that about your character or something that you did?

I mean, there had to be some sort of a genetic factor because, like, my mom and my dad are both, like, good athletes. But I think, yeah, a part of it was personality wise, but I just really wanted to win. I had that. I cared why. I mean, winning felt good, but I also. It really hurt for me to lose. I hated, like, my first tournament, I lost. I, like, locked myself in a room for, like, a week. I was so upset. But I was willing to get my heart broken. I was willing to care about something so much that my heart would be broken if I didn't achieve it. And I don't know, I felt like the idea of being better at something than everybody else made me special somehow. It was proof, and it wasn't like I was dragging myself through doing it to be great at something, because that's what it was. I really enjoyed mastering the art of judo, like, figuring it out. It was endlessly intriguing to me at the time. And I remember when I was 16, I realized while I was doing Naiwaza, which is fighting on the ground, that the end of one move was the beginning of another one.

And that's when I moved from trying to memorize all these separate techniques to trying to combine them into, like, a path and, like, a web. And I I didn't come up. And, you know, Nawaza and Judo is not the focus of the sport, really. Maybe it's, like, 20% of the time people spend on the ground, maybe less. But it wasn't like, gracie jiu jitsu, where they, like, show you, like, oh, this is the way, and this is the structure. I was very open ended, and so I was kind of, like, I had to create, like, my own, like, system, basically, my own fighting style and everything like that. And that was, I think, the most interesting to me, that I was, like, creating a philosophy and everything and concepts, and how did I piece everything together? And so I think that was the most interesting part. I could train for hours and hours and hours and hours and not realize that I'm tired because I'm trying to piece something together but I also, I think we call it opposite add, where I fixate on things for hours on end and I can't get off of it.

But if you tell me to run, I'm like, oh, my God. The whole time, I'm like, okay, I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm more tired than I was. But if you tell me if I had to try and figure out how to do a certain punch a certain right way or do a certain throw the certain right way, I would do it for hours on end, trying to get it absolutely perfect and not realize all that time had passed. And sometimes that's a negative thing, or I'll fixate on something, like something stupid I did several years ago and not be able to stop myself from thinking about it. But it's also the same thing that would keep me training on a single technique for hours on end, just trying to get it right. And my mom said when I was a kid, I would draw the same picture over and over and over again. I remember it was like a bunny in the middle, and there was, like, a bush and a bush and a tree and a tree on each side, and, like, a sun with the cool glasses, right? My mom would be like, why do you keep drawing this picture over and over?

Thousands of times, I would draw the same drawing. And she said, my answer was that I'm just trying to get it to match the picture in my head. I couldn't understand why, when I thought of a bunny and a bushes and all this stuff, and I drew it, it didn't look exactly like a bunny. And so I would keep drawing it over and over and over again to try and get it. And I guess that's, like, my personality. I guess it's something that I can't really control, for better or for worse.

Is that perfectionism? Is that how you'd kind of define that? This sort of obsessive pursuit of making the thing perfect as you see it?

I don't think it's so much perfectionism as it is mastery. I want to master and understand something completely. It's kind of like an unfinished puzzle, you know? Cause I can live and squalor. I don't think, like, the perfectionism of everything around me is really so, so important. But, yeah, being able to understand something completely is something that nags me. If I don't completely understand, I have to, like, keep going back to it.

Big Jim, you go and train with Big Jim at 16 years old. You leave home at 16 years old and go and train with Big Jim. Who's Big Jim? And why did you go and live with him? What, for eight months, roughly?

Oh, God. Been on and off for, like, years. I was up there. Well, Big Jim was one of the best coaches in the country, and he trained his son, little Jimmy, who had just won the 1999 world championships in judo. And I know judo is not that big in the US, so the places that are good at it and have good coaches and good people to train with are few and far between. And Pedro's judo was one of those places.

Yeah. Leaving home at 16 is unusual, to say the least.

Yeah.

What impact did that have on you?

It was tough. It was hard. I remember being homesick a lot. It was really isolating. You know, all I did was train all day. There wasn't any other kids my age. I was always around people older than me. You know, part of being, like, a sport prodigy is knowing your age is on your level, you know? So I was always trained with people older. I also, at the same time, felt like I was in the middle of my montage to do something, like, amazing. You know, I thought I was going to shock the world and be the first American to win the gold medal and judo 17. And so, no, it was worth it to me.

And at this time, you're 16, you have your first experience with what we call bulimia. And you talk about this in the book, where, because of the pressure for you to make way almost every week, you struggled with bulimia for the first time. What do I need to understand about that? Because I don't understand what bulimia is in full entirety, but I also don't understand the circumstances that would lead a 16 year old to make decisions that would be categorized as bulimic.

Well, basically, I had to be a weight on a deadline very often, and it's not really a weight that I could healthily stay at, and so I would have to cut weight to get there. And it started to give me a really unhealthy relationship with food, where I would, like, hoard food while I was cutting weight, like candy bars and stuff like that. And then after I made weight, I would gorge myself on it. I didn't know anything. I didn't have any resources to help me out with it, and so I just kind of spiraled into a disorder.

And that disorder would mean throwing up your food after you'd eaten it on occasion.

Yeah, I remember the first time I did it was I had, like, a childhood coach or something took me out one day, and he, like, basically, like, forced me to have a chocolate shake. And he was like, no, you gotta have a chocolate shake. Come on, it's fine. You train all the time. You need to relax. You have a chocolate shake. And I felt, like, so guilty about the chocolate shake that, and I had to be, like, make weight or something like that weekend or something. There's no way I would be able to make it. And so, like, I made myself throw up the chocolate shake, and it was actually, like, it was cold. It didn't hurt. It was that bad, you know? And I was like, oh, well, that wasn't even that terrible. And so I thought it was, like, a one time thing. But the next time I, like, ate too much, and I felt, like, really guilty about it. It just became, like, you know, the panic button of if I ate too much and I had a deadline coming up where I had to be a certain weight. I felt like it was the only thing I could do.

And I was a little girl that was growing. I grew four inches and doubled my weight in a short period of time. And so I just couldn't stay at a lower weight. But you have all this outside pressure to be able to maintain the same weight, even though as an athlete you're growing and putting on muscle and even getting taller. So it was kind of like fighting nature.

I read in your book that they called you miss man.

Yeah. In school, it wasn't cool for little girls to be muscular back then. And so before I dropped out at 16, I was really muscular, and people would grab up my arms and make fun of me all the time, to the point that I would just kind of, like, I'd wear a zip up hoodie all the time. No matter how hot it was, I always try to cover up my arms, how muscular I was, which is one reason why, when I got older, that trying to, like, fight that idea that being muscular was masculine was something that became important to me because that, you know, if you were a teenage girl in the early two thousands, it was a pretty unhealthy standard that was presented to us. So, yeah, I didn't fit the very narrow scope of what was considered attractive at that time. And, and now it's considered really cool for women to have muscles. Now all the models have stomach definition and stuff like that and are doing boxing and all this stuff and want to look toned. But that wasn't the case back end. That wasn't the case back then. That was something that I got teased for a lot.

By 18, you leave home and you go off to you leave home, as you say, because you felt like you wanted to have some control over your life. And I think you're on route to the Olympics at this point. You were thinking about going to the Olympics at 21 years old. You actually competed in the Beijing Olympics, and you were the first american woman to get an Olympic medal. And then what I found really shocking is that you made $6,000 from winning that medal at the Olympics.

Yeah, after I got taxed on it. After taxed $10,000 and got taxed on it, I actually bitched about it so much in the media when I was doing MMA that they got rid of that tax, but still, you'd only get $10,000.

Is there, like, a bit of a through line in your story that starts very young about this idea of the importance of validation and respect from other people, this kind of bit of a chip on your shoulder that was driving you?

Yeah, I think it started out as something that drove me, and then it ended up being something that held me back, that I had to kind of shake myself from. But, you know, I also benefited greatly from it. So I'm not saying I regret anything. I know that it wasn't, like, a sustainable model for me to be happy in the long run because I spoke.

To Tim Grover, who trained LeBron and Kobe, and he said the same thing to me. He said, when he's talking about Kobe and all those years training him to be a champion, that our dark side and our light side are interconnected. When he's talking about our dark side, he's basically saying the trauma, the difficult things about us, the things that we'd probably keep in the shadow if we could, they end up creating the greatness that we see on our screens. And it's like, you can't separate out the two. You can't just have this person and not this person, unfortunately. But he makes the case to me that we all have a dark side. And unfortunately, as I say, it's responsible for our light side. I see that throughout your story, this journey to understanding that part of you, and as you say in your book, liberating yourself from it, which is really interesting, because I feel like I've been through this. I've been trying to do the same thing in my life, take back the control of some of it, because, as you said there, it can lead you to the top of the mountain, and then it can sometimes bring you down the other side, or it can make you miserable at the top of the mountain.

I think I had to get to the top of several mountains to realize that, like, the mountain climbing wasn't really gonna be what made me happy. And I had this idea that if I, like, if I collected or hoarded achievements, that somehow, someday they would all add up to happiness, that I would be able to, like, I did this thing so now I could be happy forever. Like, my idea was, if I'm, like, the first American to win the Olympics in judo, then I will be happy for the rest of my life. And it's not. It didn't really work like that. Like, I could, yeah, achieve these great things, and they would make me happy for a time, but your life goes on past that. And so I kind of had to figure out after hoarding all these bucket list experiences that I would actually end up just forgetting at times. Like, someone had to remind me the other day, remember when you flew the thunderbirds? I'm like, oh, yeah. And then they didn't equate to the actual happiness, and I had to. I thought that if I, like, could make my past into something that I'd done all these great things, that it would dictate my future.

But I had to kind of figure out that, like, making myself happy with every day that I'm living individually is what I needed to do. And there's no amount of accomplishments that you can add to your trophy shelf that are going to equate to being happy forever in the future. It just isn't possible.

It sounds like you were living with a bit of a secret throughout your early MMA career and the fact that you had what appeared to be a bit of a concussion based brain injury of sorts, because on in your book, you talk about how you realize that in inspiring, if someone hit you pretty hard in the head, you'd end up seeing stars.

Yeah. I mean, people didn't really know about CTE back when I was doing judo. And I would get concussions all the time and just be told that, you know, hey, my head hurts. I have photovision. I would say it, like, stuff like that, and they'd be like, just stop being a pussy and, like, keep training. And so I would get, you know, dozens and dozens of concussions and never be allowed to stop, and I would have to keep training through them, and the symptoms would persist for weeks. So the point that I was experiencing concussion symptoms more often than I wasn't for a ten year judo career, I mean, that's the kind of thing that, like, you know, leads to CTE. All these football players that we're dealing with were having concussions repeatedly and not being allowed to rest. And so, by the time I got into MMA, this is the kind of injury that accumulates over time. You don't. You know, it doesn't go away every time you get a concussion, it's easier to get another one. And so, by the time I got into MMA, I. It was really easy for me to get concussion symptoms, and I'd rested for a couple years.

So, at first, it wasn't so bad, but it just got worse and worse and worse with time. Even if I'm winning a fight and 14 seconds and the other person doesn't touch me, there's 50 rounds of sparring that went into that training camp. And you're wearing a headgear and gloves, which are meant to protect you cosmetically, but these gloves are 14oz, and you're wearing this headgear. So your brain is, you know, suspended in fluid. The larger the thing is, like, if the 14oz, it's easier, actually, to give you a concussion when you're sparring. And it's the kind of thing that I just didn't want to, like, say anything about. You know, I didn't want. And I didn't want to address it myself or any kind of weakness in myself. And I just kept telling myself that I, you know, I just have to be perfect and not allow these people to touch me. I have to create this fighting style that's so efficient that I don't take any damage. And it got to a point where I fought Sarah McMahon, and she barely tapped me, and I obviously had a concussion afterward, I couldn't bear to look at the lights.

I had to have everyone turn the lights off, and I was looking for a way out, you know? Cause I know I couldn't sustain that forever. But, yeah, it got to the point where if I got, like, tapped at all with the, you know, Stephanie McMahon slapped me and gave me a concussion, you know, and, you know, a woman that has never been a fighter in her life and even, you know, is past her slapping prime. If she can slap me across the face and give me a concussion, you know, I shouldn't be fighting anymore.

Did you keep this a secret?

I had to keep it a secret from everybody, my coaches, Dana, even, like, myself. I just didn't want to face space up to it. I just thought that I could keep it going forever. And so that, like, I think was the most frustrating thing to me, that, like, in my first loss, I got tapped in the beginning, and I'd fallen down the stairs a week or so, like, maybe a week or so before that. Knocked myself out, falling down the stairs at my house, and then didn't say anything. Went into the fight anyway. Had a horrible weight cut, had the wrong mouth guard, which didn't have the. The protection of the back of the bottom teeth. So the first time she taps me, my teeth get knocked loose, and I'm out on my feet. Like, when I say out on my feet, it means that, like. Like, I have no. I have no depth perception, basically, and I'm at a very limited capacity of what my brain can, the information that it could give me. And so I knew that if she knew that I was hurt, I wouldn't be able to defend myself. And so I had to keep coming forward without knowing how far away she was and not being fully hold of my facilities just to keep the fight going, hoping that I would recover, but I just couldn't.

And so I think that's one of the things that really dug at me for so long that so many people were saying, like, oh, Rhonda's game plan was bad, or whatever, this. They didn't know that I wasn't present. I was just trying to survive. I couldn't see how far away she was. It wasn't like that was my game plan or anything like that. I was completely disabled when I tried to fight again, and I was like, okay, I'll give myself a break, and I'll make sure the mouth dog's perfect this time. I'm not going to knock myself out right before the fight and all those things and the same thing. I just got tapped, and I was. I was out. You know, even if I was out on my feet, I was out. So I just, like, just didn't have the hardware to continue fighting. And a lot of people would say, like, oh, you're a fucking quitter. You're this, this or that. And it's really difficult because I never had been more skilled as a fighter. I'd never been better in my life. But I just, you know, I just neurologically wasn't capable of continuing to fight at that level.

And I couldn't say anything about it then because I wanted to go and do pro wrestling. And they already have their own controversy that they had to deal with, with wrestlers having CTE and all kinds of damage from concussions. And so it was such a volatile subject that I just. I couldn't say anything about it, and I couldn't say anything about it leading into my last fight, because then I'd be basically telling the other person that, you know, they're putting a target on my head, literally. So I just had to stay silent about it for years and let people make their own assumptions about me. And, you know, it was tough because, like, in some ways, like, I've never been better as a fighter. I've never had a better grasp of everything than I ever had. I've never been faster, stronger, everything else. But, you know, you only have so many hits that you can take, and unfortunately, I took the vast majority of them as a kid doing judo.

I want to make sure I completely understand the context of what it's like to get a concussion and to live with a concussion. That ends up compounding to make it even more sensitive. You take those big hits when you're younger. They ask you to fight through the concussion. By the time you're in the UFC, you've developed this incredible style where you basically get people out of there instantly. I mean, leading up to your fight with Amanda Holmes, I remember the commentator saying at the time that you'd knocked or you'd submitted everyone within sort of 30 seconds of the fight starting. So your style had kind of adapted to become, I'm gonna get this person out of there immediately.

Yeah, that wasn't an accident. That was the goal.

That was the goal.

The goal was I had to be able to finish the person off immediately, because that was the only way that I could fight, is to not take any damage, because if they had hit.

You in the head at that point, there was a risk that you would get a concussion. And you were aware of that risk, but your coaches weren't?

No.

Were any of your coaches aware of it?

No.

Was Edmund aware of it, your strike coach?

I didn't tell anybody. I didn't. It was one of those things. I just didn't want to, like, face up to having any weakness in myself, and also, like, Evan would have made me stop. I didn't want to stop. I didn't want anyone to be making that decision for me. I didn't want to tell the company that I was having neurological symptoms because then they wouldn't let me continue to fight. I didn't want those decisions to be taken out of my hands.

In your book, you talk about the relationship you had with Edmund, and it wasn't always great in terms of his approach to coaching. You talk about how he would physically strike you during training, but more potentially, even more severely, he would emotionally abuse you during training.

I mean, honestly, I can't think of single coach that I had, like, a great like, a great relationship with, like, this is like, a lot of the coaches were of that, like, Bella Crowley kind of generation, of, like, they thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best results. And that was kind of what was, like, in vogue at the time, so. And like, that, as an athlete, you're just kind of like, all right, well, this is what I have to deal with in order to be the best. And especially with, like, these. These sports where you have no other choice. Like, this is the national team coach, and you have to get their approval and put other shit to be able to fight at this level. And so, like, Edmund was, I think, not as bad as previous coaches. So that's why I put up with a lot, because I felt like I at least had to say that I could talk back. The other coaches would just, you know, like, little Jimmy, my first coach, literally, like, dislocated my jaw as I was a little kid. I threw him once in front of everybody and laughed because I thought it was awesome.

And he threw me on the benches, on top of the table at everybody else's feet in front of all these people. And, you know, big Jim had, like, grabbed me by the throat before to, like, drive his point home that women can't defend themselves. And so this is, like, behavior that I'd been conditioned to tolerate since I was, like, a little girl. And Edmund was of that same, like, eastern european kind of, like, school of thought of, like, you have to be, like, really tough and in order to bring the best out of people. And what does that do to your emotions, though?

Because we develop, you know, at the age when most of us are developing our emotions, you're having yours suppressed and you're being made into this really, quote unquote tough person.

I think it kind of taught me from a young age to just, like, how to defuse, like, coaches that were, like, getting out of hand and to not. Because if I stood up for myself, it would just make it worse. And so it just kind of, like, taught me to, like, okay, I gotta, like, get this person in a good mood all the time, or I have to, like, butter them up, or I have to, like, strategically find my way to, like, out of being berated or something like that. And so I think it's not so much one individual that's a huge problem. I think, like, the whole system is the problem, and that it really reinforces these, like, these power imbalances that are inevitably taken advantage of, that all these coaches have free reign of their little fiefdoms and a lot of these athletes don't have any other option. And so I don't see how, like, in school, you can have, like, a teacher. Someone comes in to watch the teacher teach, degrade them on their teaching. Like, nobody does this for coaching. And, you know, so I would hear these stories about, like, these sumo coaches that, like, would kill their athletes training them, and I'd be like, yeah, you know, I could see how that gonna happen.

And it's just. It's. It's not one person. It's not one sport. It's everywhere. And there's, like, I can't say that I have all the answers for it, but I can say that, like, coaching in general creates a really, like, unhealthy power, like, imbalance that what I was able to. How I was able to take my relationship with my coach Edmund, and take it from off the rails to back on track is to have very distinct boundaries. You know, a lot of times, your coach is someone that you're, you know, is tough on you, but they're also, like, they care about you. They're a parent, they're a brother. They're a coach, too. But a lot of times, it becomes, like, an overbearing family member and a coach, and you can't be both. That's why my mom didn't want to be my coach. She didn't want to have to be my mom and my coach, because being both of those at the same time is inevitably unhealthy. And when we put boundaries in place of, like, okay, this is what your job is, and you do not do anything outside of that, then, you know, training was better than ever.

Our relationship was better than ever. But I think, like, a lot of these lines and these boundaries get blurred, and they need to be very, you know, very defined in order for it to work out.

And how were those lines blurred with your coach? Just, he was crossing them in terms of the things he was able to say and do.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it was like, he just wanted to know where I was all the time, and, like, I needed to be constantly available and stuff like that, and. Or else they would end up turning into a big argument or something like that, and I would just end up just trying to do anything I could to not get in an argument. But, yeah, I had to make a rule at one point. I was like, you're not allowed to facetime me. Cause I don't want you to just facetime me and know where I am at all times. And what I'm doing. Cause it's my fucking business. It's my privacy. And it was just. He was always trying to push that boundary now, as always pushing back and stuff like that, and. But I was like, I don't know. A lot of times I'm like, I just want to train. Like, I don't. I would be just trying to, like, placate him, because if I, like, just stopped talking to him and in an argument, then it would end up leaking into training the next day. And so it just became, like, really, like, taxing of, like, my energy in general.

But, like, I mean, I can't really think of a single, like, coach relationship that I. That I had that was, like, perfect. But it worked. You know, that's the one problem that I had always had, like, debating. I'm like, well, it's working. I'm getting better. And so you would just put up with it because there was no perfect option out there.

You said at the very start that you were very, very close to your father, and then when your father passed, these other men that almost take on what someone could liken to a fatherly role are all coaches?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, they were all like, what was it in kill Bill that he was talking about? That Bill lost his father early, so he collected father figures. Yeah, I collected them. None of them were as good as the original, but, yeah, I think that constant need for validation from a father figure was something that I was constantly pursuing. But that philosophy of coaching of, you know, you see, like, the, like, the russian figure skaters, the gymnasts that never smile because they've been, like, beaten into iron. That was basically the philosophy of all the coaches that I had. They would see someone like Bel Karoly and be like, oh, my God, like, he was their idol. And so they're all trying to, like.

Emulate that, beating the emotion out of you. This is something that I've always wondered about you because you've always had a steely exterior, you know? No, you have, especially in the fight in the UFC days. I watched some of you, your clips to remind myself of your fighting days before this. And, you know that you came in with that face, that face and just in interviews around that time and so on. And this is why I asked the question about emotion and how, because you got into this at such a young age, and you're dealing with these men who call, you know, you're lacking discipline. If you miss weight and all of these kinds of things, you go through that. The loss of your father, the unprocessed grief. I'm wondering what happens to Ronda Rousey's relationship with her own emotions.

I mean, I was always really emotional, actually, as a fighter. I would cry on the mat all the time. All the time. I cried on the mat, like, every practice for years straight. And I would get yelled at for crying.

I'd get yelled at for crying.

I yelled at for crying. So I'd cry, and then I would cry because I was crying, and I would cry because I was being yelled at for crying. And, yeah, I just. But it wouldn't be because something hurt. It would be because, you know, something, I was frustrated by something. I couldn't. I got thrown, or I couldn't make something work that was trying to make work. And I would cry out of frustration. And my mom said I had a tournament where it was full double elimination, so I ended up winning the tournament. But I lost a match earlier in the day, and every single match, I would come out crying, bow in, throw the other girl on her ass, beat her, bow out crying. Come into the next match still crying, beat the shit out of the other girl, bow out crying the whole day crying until I beat everybody. Beat the same goal that beat me twice in order to win on top of the podium, number one, crying still, because I lost that first match earlier in the day. And so, yeah, I was always very emotional. I was extremely emotional as a fighter and in training and everything like that.

And that was something I was constantly trying to like. Battle was like, if you get thrown in a tournament, don't start crying, because that was just something that would happen to me all the time. It's so funny if people think that I'm like, yeah, this emotionless robot, whatever. I fight, it took a long time to be able to get there to stop crying in the middle of the match.

Wow.

Yeah.

Dana says he's never gonna allow women into the UFC to fight. But then Dana changes his mind, and he changes his mind because of you, effectively. So in September 20 twelve. I remember it very fondly. I remember where I was when I watched the first woman fight in the UFC. Dana says that he's signing the first ever woman fighter in the UFC, a lady called Ronda Rousey, despite saying a year earlier that he wouldn't. But he called you a game changer, and so you didn't end up changing the game, and you became UFC champion. Between 20, 2012 and 2015, you won 15 fights back to back. Most of them finished within seconds. And you stacked up a bunch of records, including the fastest ever win fastest submission, fastest title defense turnaround, and you were voted the best female athlete of all time in a 2015 ESPN fan poll. And Fox Sports called you one of the defining athletes of the 21st century. Part of that sort of 15 fights back to back was, you know, when I think about that period is the amount of times you were fighting was really unusual. You were fighting.

I think there were sometimes. You were fighting three times in nine months, which is kind of unheard of for anyone in the UFC. I mean, there's fighters today that seem to just fight once a year. Why were you doing that? Why were you fighting so frequently?

I was fighting that frequently because that's how often Dana calls. And I told them that, no, if you sign me, I will be there to fight whenever you need me. And I never said no. And so anytime that I got a. An offer or any time when the guys got hurt or fell out, I was always the one that would fill in. And, you know, if there was, like a. I always fought on, like, February's and August and November is like, the worst times of the year is to fight, because that's when they needed somebody to come in and pick up the numbers. So I wasn't somebody, like, holding out to only fight on the 4 July card or New Year's card, which are the best, you know, the highest feud of the year. I would do whatever was best for the company because that's what I promised, the role that I would fulfill. That was the deal that I made when I came in, and nobody else has to do that, but I felt like I owed it to Dana. I promised him I would be there anytime that he needed me, and I was.

If you could go back and give yourself advice on that day when you signed your UFC contract, now, if you could time travel back to that Ronda and give her a little bit of advice, whisper in a what would you say?

I wouldn't change anything.

You wouldn't change anything.

Time travel's not possible. And I led myself to where I am now, and I'm happy with where I'm at, so I wouldn't fuck with it.

When you got the news that you were going to be signing for the UFC as the first ever woman to fight in the UFC, how did that feel?

Validating. Really? Yeah. And I was just really excited. I just felt like I was in on a secret that the whole world didn't know, and they were just starting to find out.

And throughout that period, while you're the UFC champion, you take up acting and you feature in a couple of films like the Fast and Furious, the Expendables, etcetera. Was that something that you always had planned, or is that something that just arose as an opportunity?

The movie stuff just kind of arose as an opportunity, but once it became a possibility, I was like, of course I could be the next Bruce Lee. Of course I could do great at this. I felt like I point was a good performer and great physical performer as well, and I could combine the two in a way that nobody else could. So I went after it with the same kind of confidence. I went after everything.

On the 14 November 2015, you had UFC 193, where you were lined up to fight Holly Holmes in Melbourne, Australia. I remember where I was when that fight happened. I didn't miss many UFC fights, and I still don't miss many, but it was a really sort of huge turning point for a number of reasons. You were indestructible, basically, that's how the whole UFC community, and I think the fan base saw you. But in that moment, as you said earlier on, there was an initial contact, and I watched the clip again earlier on, there's an initial contact, I think it was with Holly Holmes Elbow, if I can't remember, if I remember correctly. And then you talked about having this issue with depth perception because of that initial contact. And that's actually what I see in that clip. I see from that first sort of strike that there is an issue with kind of understanding where Holly is, and that fight ends in a head kick. From that moment when you leave the octagon, how does your life and perception of everything change? Because it's interesting, the way that you were built up to that, you were, I was going to say the top of the mountain.

You're up in the clouds. At that point, it was frame to everyone that you are fundamentally indestructible. And that's kind of what the marketing machine does. It does to everyone. They're fundamentally indestructible, but everyone from Muhammad Ali to my friend Israel in the UFC, everyone has their day where we find out that everyone is a human being to some degree. From the moment you leave the UFC, what is life like from that point onwards, when you get back into the medical room?

Extremely depressing. You know, that was my whole identity was being champion and undefeated, and it's just like, soul crushing really was. It was. I was just kind of, like, forced to face music before I was ready to, and I knew that it was gonna catch up to me at some point. But I was more, I think, upset that there were so many people out there that were, like, reveling in it. And I don't know, it just felt so, like, unjust in a way, because I just felt like it was just. There's so much of it just wasn't my fault. You know, I just couldn't, like, my brain just couldn't take what I asked of it anymore. And my body took as much as it could until it literally broke. And I gave everybody everything that I had, and that wasn't enough for them. They hated me for not having more. So, I mean, it was tough. It was. I saw a whole bunch of people that I thought were friends just, you know, turn on me. And it was really eye opening in a way, though, you know, to who true friends are and what is what true happiness is.

And that outward validation wasn't it. And so I think maybe you might have saved me in a way, from going down the path of trying to, like, chase that high of everybody's, you know, approval forever. But so I guess it was liberating, in a way, in the long run.

If I was a fly on the wall that night when you left that octagon, what would I have seen?

A lot of crying. I had to get my lip sewed up, the muscle underneath and then the skin. I remember I was so out of it that I, like, bit off a chunk of my lip and spit it out. Like it was like a piece of chapped, like, you know, like a chapped lip. Like, that's how out of it I was. I was biting and chewing, like, spitting out chunks of, like, the flesh in my lip. And people judging me for the decisions I was making while, well, in that state, I think, is what bothered me the most. It wasn't so much that I lost. It was just that people thought that I didn't know how to fight. And, you know, if I was at my full capacity, I don't think anyone could ever beat me. But I just, you know, I was spent. I was running on fumes for so long, I didn't have any fumes left. And the moment that I ran out of fumes was, you know, broadcast live to billions of people everywhere who all had their own assumptions about it, and none of them are right. And I felt like I couldn't speak up or say anything.

And honestly, like, whoever I tried to talk to, they didn't care about helping me communicate what I was trying to communicate. They just cared about getting as many clicks as possible so I couldn't trust anyone to speak through. So I feel like this book was the only way that I could really communicate everything that I'd been holding onto for years because, I mean, yeah, it was really tough, but I literally fought until I couldn't fight anymore. And maybe that's not enough for a lot of people, but I feel like I created the most efficient fighting style that ever created that's ever existed. And I had to realize that only people that are truly great can recognize greatness. I wanted to be so great that even an idiot couldn't deny it. But. But then I realized after going into pro wrestling that retiring undefeated and taking the equity that I had with me wouldn't have been what was best for the sport. Even though I know that I'm better than all these girls and by a fucking long shot, and I always will be, taking my equity away from me so that everybody knows that would actually tarnish my legacy.

It wouldn't make everybody take the women after me seriously. And so it had to happen for the. For the betterment of the sport. But, you know, sometimes it still stings a little bit that it's, you know, I'm not recognized as the greatest ever when I know I am. But my mom said all the time, really quick, you have this picture here that she didn't care if everybody knew she was the best in the world. She only cared if she knew she didn't care that nobody knew who was the first american world champion of judo back in 1984. It was important to her. And I think, like, somewhere along the way, it started to matter more what other people thought than what I thought. And so I think being forced back to that was actually the best thing that could have happened to me.

I don't think people realize the extent of. They see it as kind of just a game fighting. They see it as some kind of game that they're watching, like they're playing on the Xbox or PlayStation. But I don't think they understand the extent of the devastation on a human level that you kind of experience after that loss. And I think until you did that interview with Ellen where you revealed that you'd gone back to your changing room and you had these sort of. This sort of suicidal ideation about the future, most people didn't realize the extent of it until then. Did you literally have suicidal ideation in the days and hours following the fight?

No, it was basically, like, instantly when I came backstage. But, you know, suicide is the kind of thing that becomes more prevalent if, you know, it's in your family. And I literally had two generations of suicide ahead of me, it's just something that. It's always an option in your mind once it's shown to you. But I think that the fact that I was with Trav, then my husband now, that I just didn't want to, like, take the pain that I had in me and give it to him, because that's what. How I experienced suicide was like, okay, it's. You get to relieve yourself of that pain, but you have to. You pass it on to everybody else, and. But my dad was dying anyway. He wouldn't have been able to prevent his death, and he was, you know, physically suffering every day. And so that. So I understand that, and I didn't feel like I had that same kind of justification, that I wasn't going to die anyway, so I was going to live for him and for my family so that they wouldn't have to take the pain that I was feeling onto them.

Was that the hardest moment in your professional career?

Professionally, yeah.

Was it the hardest moment in your personal life?

No. Losing my dad was life worse.

You went on to fight Amanda Nunes at UFC 207 in 2016, and the fight ends again. And after this, you come to the decision that your time at the UFC is over and you decide to move on to the WWE. There's a sort of a two year gap, I believe, about a one year gap between the Nunes fight and the WWE announcement. What happens in your life in that gap?

I was mostly just being sad. I was just, like, sad and high and playing video games and eating crepes. I mean, everybody wants to rush you through grieving things, but I think it's important. And so I took that time to myself. I was also just so worn out from, like I said, running on fumes for years on end and, like, literally dragging myself out of bed every morning and, like, having to dig deep every second of the day that I just, you know, wanted to dig deep and just disappear. I had, you know, paparazzi and all kinds of crazy shit happening at the time, and I just, like, didn't want to be famous anymore, so it was always more of a tool than a goal. And now that I didn't have fights to promote, I didn't need it anymore. But I guess it wasn't done with me, so I kind of had to, like, disappear for a while to be left alone.

Were you doing anything professionally during that period, or were you just at home?

Um. I mean, I, um. Oh, just at home. I feel like I just needed to not give anymore. I don't think anyone can understand how exhausted I was and how much it had been asked of me for so long that I just needed to rest. I needed to mentally and physically rest, and. But people that have, you know, dug deep enough to make it to two olympics and win 15 fights in a row, you know, not a lot of people understand how much effort that takes and just sounds like numbers when you say it, but when you live it, it's just like, I literally had nothing left in me. I could barely get out of bed. So, I mean, it's not the kind of, like, tired that you can take a long sleep from and wake up refreshed, you know? Like, it's like the kind of tired that takes, like, a year to recover from.

Is that. Is that depression in your mind?

Yes. So you could call it depression, but, you know, I didn't see anyone and get diagnosed.

Your husband was there throughout that period with you?

Yeah, he was there the whole time. He was the one supplying the crepes. Yeah, he's amazing. He really was, you know, helped drag me out of my own hole. And I'm very much like, you know, like a golem cave creature in general. Like, I just will, like, not leave my little dentist. But he's very much a social butterfly, and he would make sure that, like, okay, you need to go out and interact with human beings. And I'm like, no, which, you know, has always kind of been how I was. I always struggled socially and stuff like that, which is why I got into judo, was to be able to, like, socialize and just be able to talk and communicate. And so I just kind of reverted back to, like, my hermit tendencies. And, yeah, Trav literally had to, like, drag me out of my hole, and I'm glad he did, but, yeah, I would easily slide back into the Misty mountains anytime if I was allowed.

Did he understand what you were going through psychologically in that period? Were you able to communicate to him?

I think he understood to an extent. He had a different kind of incredible story where he started fighting at 26 and then was the number one contender at the UFC in as much time as it took me to be the number one contender in the UFC. So he was, like, incredibly naturally talented, but he hadn't been, you know, pursuing a goal of athletic greatness since he was six the way that I had. And so just the disappointment of, you know, never going, never winning an Olympic gold medal and never being able to retire undefeated and those kind of, like, lifelong goals. I don't think a lot of people understand that, but he also was still, like, so supportive and there for me, you know? And he never got fed up with me moping around and literally crying over, like, eggs if I, like, you know, broke the yolk and be like, I can't even make you eggs, you know, and, like, just being like that for, like, yeah, over a year and stuff. And his, like, he's just such incredible love and patience. It was just, like, there for me all the time, and just like, man, it hold me when I needed it.

Even if he didn't understand why I was so sad, he was there for it anyway, so, yeah, he's the best thing that ever happened to me. I love him so much, but, yeah, he might not have understood it so much, but he was still there for me. I knew you were gonna get me at some point. I told you, I'm emotional.

No, I don't know. It's often in those moments, our hardest moments, that we realize, as you said earlier, who we've got around us, but also the value of certain people in our lives. I think in my hardest times in my life, that's following those times is when I realized who really, really mattered, and my partner in particular, through my hardest moments. You go through the dark canyon of these tough times in life, and you emerge. That person walked through it with you, and you go, fucking hell. This person, now I understand how much they mean to me. Sometimes it takes that to understand what someone means to you. And it certainly sounds like that moment crystallized what Travis means to you in your life as well.

Yeah, I think when we first got together, we went through so much stuff that would have driven anybody else apart, but it really just brought us all, brought us. Brought the two of us closer together. And I'm just so glad that we were with each other when we were going through the hardest times, that we didn't have to go through it alone.

Where does the WWE come in? So that's ultimately what sort of, I guess, pulled you out of your little cave there.

But, yeah, I had to get out of the cave and in front of a crowd of thousands of people live, of course, which is really funny, because I really don't like it. I don't like being in front of crowds and a bunch of people, and I hate public speaking, but I just love the stuff that I get to do while doing it, you know? But, yeah, I kind of my friends, the four horse women, shayna, Jessamine, and Marina, that were like, the friends that I made. I mean, I knew Marina back from judo, and I met Shayda and Jessamine through mma, and we really became really close knit group. And for me and for how hard it was for me to socialize and make friends, these were my girls and they all started getting into pro wrestling, and I just started doing it for fun, and it was just so fun. And it wasn't a competition, it was everyone working together to try and do something great together. And so it reminded me more of filming action movies and doing fight choreography, except for it was kind of in its purest form where you have to tell the story in the movie, of the movie part, and then there's a fight and then the story, and, like, usually the fight is like, separate from that.

And I feel like pro wrestling is like the purest form of combat storytelling because you can only tell the story through the combat. I was just fascinated with that, especially, you know, wanna be Bruce Lee. And it became that thing that, like, I started to fixate on and wanted to be better and better at it and just would go into training and lose track of time and realize that I'd been going for 5 hours kind of a thing. And I love that feeling of being lost in something. To my friend, I was telling somebody, like, passion is my passion. I just love to be passionate about things. And I guess that flow state is fun, and I just love being in it. Then I started just training for fun and then end up, you know, getting, I didn't really get an opportunity to go to WWE. I was kind of like, hey, guys, I want to do this. And then they were like, okay. And, yeah, then just kind of snowballed into. Because at first I was like, okay, I want to have a baby soon. And it'd be kind of cool to go and do some pro wrestling for a couple months before I go and have my baby.

And then it just kind of like, snowballed into this whole beast and this whole, like, other life that I didn't know that I was going to have. But it was very much like a calling, much more than a pursuit, if that made sense.

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It's kind of like all of. It's kind of like acting. The press conferences, the bravado is in your book. You talk about how comments online and newspaper comments and stuff would get to you.

I mean, you know, starts off like that. But yeah, at first, you know, when everything is going great, it was like, I would look at my comments like the morning newspaper. I'd wake up in the morning and look at my comments. I'd look at my tag photos, and it's so unhealthy. But after my first loss, I quit cold turkey, which I feel like that was one thing that I needed to do was to not constantly need that outside validation and stuff like that, especially from the Internet and social media and stuff. And I was kind of, like, spiraling in a way and kind of like giving that way too much stock in my emotional state and stuff like that. And then pro wrestling, you're literally in front of a crowd that is like the embodiment of a comment section in front of yourself. But that's also why I really enjoyed being a heel, which I wish they would have let me be a heel more often, because that's why I feel like I was happiest when I wasn't trying to placate to the crowd, purposely trying to piss them off and get a rise out of them, and not trying to constantly, you know, Pander.

I was surprised to hear about the WWE, that they kind of rewrite the script last minute and that it's not. I don't you think of such a big business, you imagine they've got script writers and the scripts have written.

You would think it wouldn't be an absolute clusterfuck shit show, and you would be wrong. Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's so needlessly dangerous. Like, no one can, like, a lot of times, people can't rehearse. Things are changed last minute. A lot of times you see them outside, they're performing, they've only talked about it, and they're doing it for the first time. So a lot of these injuries happen because people just weren't able to rehearse. And the company doesn't give a shit because we're all expendable to them.

Did you feel expendable to the FC, to the WWE?

Yes. Yeah, I think we all did. And they made sure to make us feel that way.

Why? They made sure to make you feel that way?

Yeah.

So that you wouldn't get above your station or something or so that you would just do whatever you're told.

Yeah, just do whatever you're told. Just take it.

And you're all contractors at the WWE as well, so you're not employees. You have to pay for your own healthcare and all these kinds of things, from what I read in your book.

Yep.

Which is pretty crazy. I mean, that would never be allowed in where I'm from in the UK, and it's sort of Vince McMahon's kingdom.

Yeah. Well, I mean, supposedly he's out now because they caught him paying company funds so he can show some girl's head in the office and do a threesome with her, with Johnny Lauriniatis, but his cronies are still there. And so when that stuff started coming out and Vince was gone before, he was still basically just calling it in and running the company and. But, yeah, like, Bruce Prichard, who's there now, is still, like, the head of creative or whatever title they gave him, is basically just taking orders from Vince and still running the company through him. And so when Vince was resigned formally because of all these, like, sexual allegations and stuff that were coming out, he was still running the company informally, and I think he still is to this day.

You don't have a whole lot of nice things to say about these people.

I mean, depends on who. The girls in the locker room, I absolutely love them.

The people at the top running.

Yeah. I mean, Steph and triple H, I think they're honestly doing their best. But, I mean, I think that Vince McMahon just created a fundamentally sick environment. And I think if Ari is gonna be able, is gonna be. If Ari Emanuel, who bought it out from WME, is gonna be able to actually make this multi billion dollar dysfunctional organization into one that functions, he's got to clean out all of Vince's cronies. He's got a completely clean house, and remove Vince's influence completely. But, you know, no one's asking me, but that's just what I experienced when Vince was gone. He was still running the show through people that he'd hired in the past. Bruce Prichard being number one of them.

Bruce Prichard's still there, I believe.

Yeah, John Laurinaitis took, like, he was cut loose because he got named specifically in the scandal. But, yeah, Bruce Prichard is literally. I'd never heard him say a single one of his own opinions. He'd only say that Vince says this. Vince says that. Vince says this. Vince says this. Vince, Vince. Vince says Vince. And so he's literally just like, you know, I called him Vince's Avatar. That's basically what he is.

You returned to the UFC after you left in 2019. You were there from 2017 to 2019, and in 2017 is when you got married with Travis. I couldn't figure out from the date. I didn't think the date was in your book. But at some point during this journey, you start trying to have children, something I'm trying now with my partner on that process as well. And you talk in the book about a really heartbreaking incident where you're filming a tv show with 911, the tv show 911. And there was fight scenes and various stunts in that movie. And a day after that, you suffered a miscarriage.

Yeah. Well, I found out I was pregnant right before the show started filming, and then my finger got chopped off from a boat door falling on it, and. But, you know, we got. We went and checked out, and there's, you know, the babies seemed just fine, but then I miscarried a couple weeks later, so I just kind of always felt like that was my fault, that I wanted to keep doing dangerous stuff while I was pregnant because I thought it made me cool. And then. And then I was just, like, depressed and drinking and smoking and not taking care of myself. And then I got pregnant right away again. And then we never even saw a heartbeat that time. But I wasn't expecting anything more because I just wasn't taking care of myself.

So you had two miscarriages?

Two miscarriages, yeah. And then I went through IVF, four cycles of IVF, to be able to get eight embryos because we wanted to have, like, three or four kids. And the first one that we used actually worked. That. That's, you know, lake of my daughter now. But, um. But, yeah, we're in the process of doing it right now. And I just got news yesterday that our first cycle didn't work, so it's tough. Anyone going through is tough, and, like, people just don't talk about it, but, you know, it's hard because you have, like, so much hope every time, and. And, um, yeah, I don't know. I'll just have to wait till the end of this book tour to try again, but I was really hoping to be pregnant today. But, you know, it's the kind of thing that nobody talks about, so. And so, so many women think they're going through it alone, but it's really, really common. But it's just really hard when things don't work out.

So many women and couples are going through this, and as you say, it's not something we talk about because the mixture of feelings surrounding it are complex, to say the least.

I think, like, you know, no one wants to burden anybody else with what they're going through, but a lot of times, it's not. You're not burdening other people. You're, you know, I don't know if it's like camaraderie, but you're offering something to other people that are going through the same thing. And a lot of times, it's like a woman. You can feel like it's your fault, but, you know, your peak productive years are your peak athletic years. So I decided to use those on my career. And, you know, thankfully, I was able to get a bunch of embryos when I was young, and hopefully, you know, we'll be able to still have a couple more kids. But, you know, I still. I got my poe and I got my boys, so, you know, I got a lot more than most than a lot of people that have been through it, but, you know, so you've got.

Three kids in total. Two of them are from Travis's previous relationship with his previous partner, where you're now the stepmother, and you've had a daughter of your own.

Yeah.

People don't understand the. Because there are people that have gone through this and they understand, although, because no one's talking about it, they've not had their feelings echoed by someone publicly before. And then there's this other group of people that have never been through this sort of IVF journey of success, failure, failure, success, failure, etcetera. For those people that have never experienced it, what is that like? What is the complexity of the emotions that you experience and thought?

It's just a grind. It's a grind, and it's really hard on you mentally and physically or body. And, like, like, this last cycle, I wasn't allowed to, like, you know, work out or anything. For weeks on end. And so it's like my first time around when I had to do like four cycles in a row and then the transfer cycle, I mean, like, I was like, just not recognizable physically and just mentally so worn out. You're on all these kind of hormones and you're going through this, like, emotional roller coaster and stuff and you just, you can't really talk about it, you know? And, yeah, sometimes, like, I would, you know, just people that are like psychotic trolls that, like, try and follow me around online and like, braid me about these kind of things about, like, at the time, I'd like not having a kid when I was trying and, and stuff like that. And that's, I guess, the, what you have to live with being a public figure, but, and you're not supposed to say anything about it because how dare you not be grateful for your good fortune. But, man, it, um, it sucks when you're going through it and you feel like, you know, the world is also still looking over your shoulder and you're not living up to, you know, your own expectations.

I don't know if there's a, I don't know if there's a feminine word for emasculating, but it's, you know, effeminating. It feels like if you can't naturally have a baby, like, I mean, my doctor was like, if you, if you stop smoking and drinking, you could have a baby. Like, you know, smoke a bunch of weed and drinking, you naturally have a baby. But because we wanted to have so many, he was like, you should get all your embryos now, so when you're older, you can take your time and do it. And so it's just like, yeah, it's tough because as a woman, you have to choose, am I going to go for a career during my peak years or am I going to go for kids? And so, luckily, science makes it so you can have both, but it doesn't make it easy.

This has been very front of mind for me because I'm trying now, and I've actually sat here yesterday with two fertility doctors, two different fertility doctors, because I really wanted to understand the whole process. Understand, because I think people typically think that fertility is a female thing, but the fertilities doctors told me quite clearly that when they go through the IVF rounds, it's 50 50 typically as to why sort of a baby isn't conceived, it's 50% of the time it's the man. 50% of the time it's the woman. And so I'm really grateful that you share that, because lots of people are struggling. And increasingly, the IVF clinics, I think, off the top of my head, have grown 90% in popularity over the last couple of years. And because we're having, our careers are being extended further and a variety of other things. Sperm counts are dropping, testosterone levels are dropping. It's only going to get more common.

Yeah. And one thing I will say that's great about it is because I did go through two pregnancies that my doctor told me. It was probably because it wasn't because you talked your finger off. It wasn't because if you were drinking or smoking is because there's genetically not conducive to life. And so the great thing with IVF is you get these embryos and you can have them tested first, and then you don't have to make a decision at 20 weeks long of like, oh, your baby has this kind of, you know, disorder malformality, and you have to make that decision. And so, you know that they're, they're healthy going into it, but then when you put all that effort into it and you finally do it and then it doesn't work out, I mean, that's, that's crushing in itself, too, you know, so it's, it's tough. I mean, science is amazing, but it is a really difficult process to go through.

Where does your happiness come from these days? You've had a real sort of a pivot in terms of where you look for happiness over the last couple of years.

Yeah, I mean, my happiness is every day with my family. That's what it is. And I'm so lucky that I get to be retired in my mid thirties, be able to spend, like, all my time with my husband and my kids and to be there for them and to be able not have to worry about so much and get to just focus on them and. Yeah, I don't know, just day to day, I say I'm retired, but I still do stuff, but I don't do stuff with the intention of, I have to pay the bills with this. Yeah, I mean, I'm not, like, only, like, only my husband, only a wife and mom. I started writing as just a way to kind of help me from, you know, not fixating on, like, myself or picking at myself and got into, like, screenwriting and which is just, like, a really great way for if I am having, like, just, you know, like, a destructive thought process or something like that, that I can, like, turn my mind into towards something creative and actually, like, make something out of all of that mental energy that I'm just turning inward and hurting myself with.

And so then came out with this book, and I've actually, I'm working on my fourth script right now, and my first one's being made into a comic book, which I touch on in another book, too. But it's also, like, doing these kind of things not with the intention of making millions of dollars or impressing a bunch of people, but just that the act of it is so fun. I'm interning right now at the story department. That's all I was working on in the car. Yeah, I'm learning how to be a reader and write coverages and read lots of. Lots of scripts and make me a better writer and learn the dark art of writing coverages, which people don't see. They're not public. But to be able to distill script down to as few words as possible and know what you're looking for and all these things and just kind of, like, learning these skills that I'm really fascinated in. And that's just, like, validating in themselves, you know? And, like, with our ranch and everything like that and raising our cows and, like, my favorite part is we took this land in Oregon that was, like, completely degraded.

You know, it had been mismanaged for years. There was more dirt than there was a grass. And to be able to, we're using regenerative practices with our wagyu and our poultry to be able to, like, bring this land back to life, you know? So that was, like, been more rewarding to me than reading a whole morning of positive comments on a freaking picture is actually going out and seeing this land become better, and that kind of stuff is really rewarding. And I don't have to worry about promoting it or what people will think of it or how much money I'm making from it. So, yeah, I'm retired, but I'm busy.

It must be difficult to go from those arenas that I watched you in all around the world with all those people screaming and cheering to this farm in Oregon, because I don't know. I don't know. One assumes that we always talk about this adrenaline rush that you get from fighting and competing. The opposite of that is a farm in Oregon.

I guess so. But, I mean, I love, my favorite crowds to wrestle in front of are small crowds. I love being in a small, non televised crowd. That's my favorite fight. I could fight in a closet. I could fight in an arena. It's not making it better to me. I just want to win the fight, the fight itself is what I care about. That's what gave me the joy. I was completely blocking them out. I mean, they're welcome to be there, but they're. But they're not part of my actual experience of the fight itself. I mean, winning and everyone being like, wow, I mean, that's an incredible feeling. That's great. But that's not why I got into it. I didn't get into. Judo isn't a big sport that there's going to be crowds of people cheering for you, for anyone that's crazy enough to want to win an Olympic gold medal in anything. It's not because they want to be famous or they want a whole bunch of people to know or cheer for them. It's because they want to be the best at something. And I just love that process of going from knowing nothing about something to mastering it.

I love the process of mastery.

You said you used a word earlier on self destructive thoughts. Am I right in thinking that your self destructive thoughts, which appear to still be with you today, are the reason, in part, why you were so great when it came to the UFC and fighting?

Yeah, I guess, like, you know, enter that flow state, I guess, of being, like, so lost in doing something that you can't think of anything else. Everything else disappears. Like, that was always my favorite place to be, you know, in swimming, I didn't have that. Your mind is left to wander while you're swimming or in judo, you know, there's nothing happening except for what's happening in front of you and fighting. There's nothing going on except for what's going on in front of you. And in pro wrestling, there's nothing going on except for the reality you created in this match that you're in. And, yeah, I love being completely lost in the task of doing something the best that you can. That's something that's addicting and I guess something that I still do now, you know, trying to do, like, through writing and everything like that. But I don't know, I just. I guess that's just where my happy place is, but, you know.

Do you still have those self destructive thoughts today?

Oh, yeah. I mean, all the time. But, I mean, it's just kind of like something you'll, like, wake up and be like, oh, my God, I remember that thing that you said several years ago that was so stupid. I remember that thing you tweeted, you stupid bitch. Things that, like, come up that you can't do anything about it but just, you know, ruminate and sometimes it's like, you know, try not to think of a blue duck kind of a thing. And a lot of times it's like that. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of something great and I'll just be like, don't think of something bad. And then because of that, it'll, like, pop up in my head and. Yeah, I don't know.

Did you go to therapy at any point in your career?

I mean, I've tried, but, you know, my mom's a psychologist, so, you know, anyone that I wanted to talk to, I was just kind of like, you're not as smart as my mom. Yeah, but I've attempted. But I've never found anyone that I really, like, clicked with. But I've given it a couple of shots. But, I mean, maybe it's not for everybody. I don't think it's for me.

The other picture that I found when I was doing my research is this beautiful picture here. And the question I have for you is about the lessons you learned from this man.

Oh, I'm gonna keep this.

You can keep both of them.

Lessons I learned, you know, I wish I remembered more. We don't even have video or anything, you know, very few pictures. But I don't know, it's just more of, like, examples that he gave me of how to actually, like, be a man and how to be a great husband. Like, my mom and dad were so in love with each other. I remember they would, like, make out over our breakfast and we'd be like, eh. Yeah, I know. But he was, like, so in love with my mom and she was so in love with him. And I think that's why I was smart enough to wait until Trav to get married because I knew what I was looking for. And so he showed me what a loving husband and father is. And, you know, he's the one that when my mom was so worried about, you know, me being late developmentally and all these things my mom said, he was the one that was always like, you know, Ronnie's a sleeper. She's gonna show everybody. And so he was always the one that, like, believed that I was going to be, like, exceptional and put that belief in my mind that I am exceptional and I'm going to do incredible things.

And so, yeah, never forgot it, I guess. I think he was right.

You're named after him, right? He's called Ron.

Yeah. I was supposed to be Ronald John Rousey Junior, but I'm a girl, so. I'm Ronda Jean Rousey. The first, not the last.

And you did show everyone. That's exactly what you did in your career. You showed everyone. And, you know, it's funny because I'm a big UFC fan, so I watched your career, enjoyed it so much. You gave me some incredible moments throughout all of those major fights that you had. And it's interesting because from reading your book and speaking to you today, I realized that the very human cost of the entertainment that I enjoyed as a fan, behind that sat someone who is quite clearly pretty obsessed with winning, being mastery in your own words, and being the very best at everything you apply yourself to. And with that comes a cost. You know, we don't have to pay the cost as fans. We just get to enjoy the entertainment. And so it's very easy, I think, without the full picture being illuminated, to not pay tribute to someone who gave us so much as fans, but behind the scenes had to struggle in really profound ways from the age of six years old for that joy that you brought to all of our lives. So on behalf of fans that do understand the full picture, I personally want to say thank you so much for that.

Because, yeah, I used to step at in the morning in the UK to watch you fight because you were like nothing I'd ever seen. You define the division, you basically created the concept of women fighting in the UFC and you did it, in a way with a star that I'd never seen before and frankly, haven't really seen since. So thank you for that. I know it's difficult. I can tell from when you talk about those moments how difficult it still is. But that's what I would expect from someone who is one of the real goats of the sport. Thank you for writing this book as well. It's incredibly honest and I think it's perfectly written in many respects, but the timing of it is perfect because you're in a certain chapter of your life where you're able to look back on all of these experiences with a certain retrospective clarity and wisdom that is incredibly helpful. And you found yourself on the other side of all of this stuff now as a mother and as a normal human away from the WWE and the UFC. And from that perspective, I think everyone can learn a tremendous amount about life, about happiness, about family, about committing yourselves to something with the form of mastery that you had.

But also, more than anything, what I take from it is what really matters in life. And I think that's, if I've interpreted it correctly, is the real objective of the book. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. Not knowing who they're leaving it for.

Uh oh.

Why does everyone get scared when I want to go to this diary? Okay.

No.

Okay. Interesting.

Fear of the unknown.

It's not. It's not. It's not terrifying. Sometimes. They're horrific. What was the most fun moment of your entire life?

Of my entire life?

Yeah.

Most fun. God. I mean, I've had a lot of fun. There are probably intimate moments with my husband that I can't share, but we have a good time. He'll be happy for the shout out. That's what matters.

Ronda Rousey R fight available everywhere right now. An incredible book, and I recommend everyone to go and get it. Thank you so much, Rhonda.

Thank you for having me.