How Ronda Rousey's journey helped cultivate her aura of dominance
Ronda Rousey is hardly just a mixed martial arts star, though she's easily the most dominant athlete in the sport.
Rousey will defend her women's bantamweight title Saturday in the main event of UFC 184 at Staples Center in Los Angeles against Cat Zingano in a rare title bout pitting opponents with unbeaten records.
But Rousey is far more than just the UFC's brightest star. She's an Olympic medalist, a popular movie actress, a swimsuit model and a media sensation who frequently guests on late-night talk shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live and Conan. She's also a favorite of Jim Rome's and appears regularly on his national radio and Showtime television shows.
There are six statues that sit outside the various entrances to the Staples Center, honoring some of the greatest men to work in Los Angeles. In addition to legendary Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn, there are bronzed statues of Lakers stars Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Magic Johnson, ex-Kings star Wayne Gretzky and boxer Oscar De La Hoya.
Given that there are no women so honored, it is hardly a stretch to think that one day Rousey, a native Californian, could be the first.
Rousey, 28, has been so dominant in starting her career 10-0 that she's around a 9-1 favorite to beat Zingano, widely perceived as her greatest challenge.
Think for a moment, though, where the UFC would be without her. And yet, it's not too difficult to see a few scenarios in which Rousey may never have gotten into the fight game.
The most obvious, of course, would have been had she won a gold medal instead of a bronze in the 2008 Olympics. There are doors opened for gold medalists that simply aren't open to anyone else.
But beyond that, had Rousey not happened upon a Showtime broadcast of the first EliteXC fight card in 2007, she may never have considered MMA as a possibility. MMA was just beginning to blossom in early 2007 when Showtime decided to air that EliteXC fight card in Southaven, Miss. The company had grandiose plans and Showtime wanted to get in on the ground floor.
Much of the talk about the card, which featured Renzo Gracie against Frank Shamrock in the main event, centered around the fact that it would be the first to be nationally televised on premium cable.
Buried on the main card, though, was a women's fight between Gina Carano and Julie Kedzie that was receiving precious little attention.
Carano, though, emerged as a star and was quickly dubbed as the face of women's MMA. One of the interested observers of that Feb. 10, 2007, bout was a 20-year-old judoka who was preparing for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Rousey loved what she saw on her television screen.
"After I saw that fight, I knew that's what I wanted to do," Rousey said. "… Let's face it: MMA was really the only thing where I could use what I'd learned over all those years and make a career out of it. Not surprisingly, though, no one really had the same belief that I did.
"The Carano-Kedzie fight was the first women's MMA fight I ever saw. I noticed how all of the men in the room were engaged and how much they respected them and how in awe they were. … I never forgot that."
And so even as she continued onward toward the Olympics, miserable the entire time, she suddenly had new motivation. She had to find a way to fight.
Once she returned home with a bronze that quite easily could have been gold, she settled in for a collection of odd jobs. She considered becoming a rescue swimmer for the Coast Guard, though she opted against that. She worked for a while as a veterinary technician. She was a bartender. She worked the graveyard shift at 24 Hour Fitness.
Rousey did what she had to do to get by. There were a few nights where she slept in her car. She put makeup on for the first time in her life when she was 21 and tending bar for a very simple reason.
"I needed the tips," she said.
She wasn’t happy during the latter part of her time as a judoka. She had to move away from her California home and spent much of her time on the East Coast.
She wasn't with friends and couldn't do what she wanted to do.
"I realized how truly miserable I was [around 2007 while training in judo]," she said. "The journey, I think, is just as important as the destination and I had fallen into a funk where the destination justified how much the journey sucked."
As great as the exhilaration of earning an Olympic medal was, so, too, was the high Rousey got from fighting.
Her first bout has been long since forgotten by all except for Rousey and a precious few others. She defeated Hayden Munoz by arm bar in just 23 seconds during an amateur MMA event in Oxnard, Calif., on Aug. 6, 2010.
What Rousey remembers most about that night was the long ride home in her 2005 Honda Accord that she lovingly referred to as "Fonda."
It was, as she says, "Fonda, Ronda's Honda."
After beating Munoz, Rousey gulped down a slice of apple pie a la mode and then hopped into the car and made her way home, listening to "Don't Slow Down" by Matt and Kim.
"I'll never forget how I felt that night," she says. "It was really, really late at night and I had to work the next day. … [I realized that] finding MMA had turned my life around. Now, the journey and the destination are my favorite parts."
As a result, she's spent all of her time focusing on her weaknesses, striving to get better each day.
Her popularity has reached almost unprecedented heights in what has long been a male-dominated sport.
Part of her appeal is, of course, her looks, which is why ESPN the Magazine put a nude photo of her on its cover, and why Sports Illustrated included her in its 2015 swimsuit edition.
Another part of it is her sassy attitude and quick wit. She's at home in front of a camera and she is at ease with a group of reporters, where, much like with UFC president Dana White, nothing is out of bounds.
But mostly, her appeal is because she's become an MMA version of Mike Tyson, an irresistible force not focusing so much on victory as on destruction.
"I go out there to win and I'm satisfied by a win," she said. "But I was taught by my mother when I was doing judo growing up to consider any time I went to the judges a loss. That's allowing a fight to get outside of your control, and so if you put the [outcome] in somebody else's hands, you probably deserve to lose.
"Whenever I had a decision in judo, I always expected it to be a loss because I never expect anyone to win the fight for me."
And so she'll go out against her greatest challenge on Saturday, a woman she calls "a kick-ass chick" and whom she says she respects immensely, and look, as she always has, to finish the fight.
She's known far and wide within the sport for her fierce countenance, the mean mug, if you will, as she walks to the cage and awaits the start of the fight.
But when her fights end, the change in Rousey is remarkable. She laughs and appears almost shocked at what she's done, at the carnage she's wrought.
"It's one of my most overwhelming, incomprehensible moments," Rousey said of the seconds immediately after a bout ends. "It's like going from having complete tunnel vision to being able to see everything at once. I'm just very overstimulated in that moment. I'm not sure how to react in that moment and I'm trying to get outside the arena without getting overwhelmed.
"I don't want to lose it until I get to the back and I can sit behind the curtain and close my eyes and my coach is cutting my [hand] wraps off. That's when I get to enjoy it the most."
