Ronda Rousey (Greatest Women's Fighter Ever): The Truth Behind My Fighting, I Kept This A Secret My Entire Career, WWE Is A Mess & Vince McMahon Is Still Running It! | The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

People don't know about this.

I had to keep it a secret.

Ah, it's really, really difficult.

Rhonda, you have 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, we 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 job.

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 last year, holy home.

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.

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.

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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 in bulk 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, that 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 Approxia, 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, but 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.

There's little things like that that still express themselves to this day, but mostly it's not noticeable now.

The umbilical cord was wrapped around your neck.

The doctors gave you a zero out of 10 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 incident?

No, no one ever did a brain scan or anything like that.

I got tested for deafness for a long time, autism.

Approxia didn't exist as a diagnosis until after I had really gotten over it.

It was actually like a fan mom and her daughter that brought me like 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 Approxia.

I was like, oh my God, this actually fits everything that we experienced perfectly.

We ended up having a walk for Approxia here.

I got to meet a bunch of different kids and stuff that were dealing with similar things.

Yeah, it's kind of like 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, really socializing with other kids, sports, specifically judo made it kind of, it was 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 10?

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 studying 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 like my, kind of my whole world turned upside down.

And then my mom ended up remarrying a couple of years later.

And then when I was around 10, 11 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 Benard -Sulliard 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.

So his 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 one 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 an 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's okay, that everything can come crashing down at any moment.

And I guess I like 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 of my life and where I'm at.

But you were close to him.

Yeah, I was a big time daddy's girl.

Yeah, but as part of the speech therapy was that 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 Mina on the weekend.

And so the speech therapist said I just 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 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.

Because I think eight years old, you don't understand the concept of suicide or 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 like 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 like sisters didn't ever really want to talk about it.

And I think, you know, my, yeah, no one really 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 in 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.

I found this picture of her.

Yup, that's mom. She looks like a badass.

She is badass. She was 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.

She was the one that always went by armbar.

Oh, really? Yeah, and she just kind of like taught me how she did it.

I added to it and learned things as well, but it's become like kind of a family heirloom as 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 10 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?

I think like you know, like 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, he mentions that kids that lose a parent before they're 10 actually end up being more successful statistically later in life.

And it's like, well, he's the one that delved into it, into his book.

But you know, when I was reading it, I'm like, oh, you know, I could see, I could see that that makes sense in a way and the, the epoxy and stuff like really pushing me towards sports and like being physical and things like that and being the youngest of the sisters.

So, you know, I was the one that was getting beat on at the house.

So it made me tougher and wanted to constantly be able to like prove myself as, you know, not just being a little baby, but deserving of respect and stuff like that.

And those kind of like 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 don't want to win the Olympics in this now.

And, but that was just how encouraging my parents were, you know, if they're like, oh, you want to swim, you're going to, you can win the Olympics and swimming, you know?

And so I was just always fed that expectation that I could do everything.

And at sort of 10 years old, you moved to Santa Monica and you had your first attempt and try it judo.

Is that right? Yeah, I, 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.

Yeah. So after a little bit of that, I was like, uh, 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 like trying to figure out how to do judo.

And I had the most fun that I ever had because I loved that there was no one way to do it.

If, you know, 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, you know?

And so, because it was so like 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, in swimming.

I was one of the top kids in the state, but I wouldn't like really win swimming meets.

And so, um, 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.

Um, I mean, I can't always say how she felt, but I mean, I was kind of like identified as being like a prodigy of judo, pretty young.

And, uh, 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, and, um, but she didn't really want to be that overbearing coach mom on the match.

You know, more of like, I was like, you go here to this person, you go here to that person, it was like the overarching, like architect of my career and everything like that.

You, um, you enter your first tournament and you win the tournament with instant wins, epons.

I don't know what an epon is.

Epon 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 in 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 it about your character or something that you did?

Uh, I mean, there had to be some sort of a genetic factor because like my mom and my dad are both like good athletes.

Um, 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, you know, achieve it.

And I don't know. I think I felt like the idea of being better at something than everybody else like made me special.

Somehow it was like proof.

And it was also, it wasn't like I was dragging myself through doing it to be great at something because that's what it was.

I, I really enjoyed like mastering the art of judo, like figuring it out.

It was like endlessly intriguing to me at the time.

And I remember when I was 16, I like realized while I was, you know, doing Newaza, 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 like trying to memorize all these separate techniques to trying to combine them into like a path on like a web.

And I didn't come up and, you know, Newaza and judo is not the focus of the sport really.

Maybe it's like 20 % of the time people spent on the ground, maybe less.

But it wasn't like Gracie, Jujitsu, where they like show you like, oh, this is the way and this is a structure.

And 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, 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 would call it like opposite ADD, where I like fixate on things for like hours on end and I can't get off of it.

And, but if you tell me to like run, you know, 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 like, if I had to try and figure out how to like 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 I'd passed.

So, and sometimes that's like a negative thing or I'll fixate on something like something stupid.

I did it like 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, a bush and a tree and a tree in each side and like a sun with the cool glasses, right?

My mom would be like, what, why do you keep drawing this picture over and over and 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, you know, my personality, I guess, it's something that I can't really control for better or for worse.

And 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 perfectionism as it is mastery.

I want to like master and understand something completely.

It's kind of like an unfinished puzzle, you know?

Because I can live in squalor, like 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 it, 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. And 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.

Part of being a sport prodigy is knowing your age is on your level.

So I was always training with people older.

I also at the same time felt like I was in the middle of my montage to do something amazing.

I thought I was going to shock the world and be the first American to win the gold medal in judo at 17.

And so it was worth it to me.

And at this time, you're 16, you have your first experience with what we call bulimia.

You talk about this in the book, 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 beat 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 giving me like a really unhealthy relationship with food, where I would hoard food while I was cutting weight, like candy bars and stuff like that.

And then after I made weight, I would like 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 disorder.

And that disorder would mean throwing up your food after you'd eaten 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 basically forced me to have a chocolate shake.

And he was like, no, you got to have a chocolate shake, come on, it's fine.

And you'd train all the time, you had to relax, you didn't have a chocolate shake.

And I felt so guilty about the chocolate shake 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 I made myself throw up the chocolate shake.

And it was actually like, it was cold, it didn't hurt, it was that bad.

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 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'd always try to cover up my arms how muscular it was, which is one reason why when I got older that trying to 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 2000s, 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 now it's like considered really cool for women to have muscles.

Now all the models have stomach definition and stuff like that.

And like, I'm doing boxing and all this stuff and I want to look toned.

But 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 en 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 women 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 you got taxed on it.

It was $10 ,000 and got taxed on it.

I actually pitched about it so much in the media when I was doing MMA that they got rid of that tax, but still, you would 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 I also benefited greatly from it.

So I'm not saying I regret anything, but 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, you know, 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 like the trauma, the difficult things about us, the things that we would 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 there too.

You can't just have this person and not this person, unfortunately.

But like 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.

Now, I see that throughout your story, this sort of journey to understanding that part of you.

And as you say in your book, like liberating yourself from it, which is really interesting because I feel like I've been through this, trying to be I've been trying to do the same thing in my life.

I've been trying to 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, it 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, well, 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.

My idea was if I'm like the first American to win the Olympics in judo, then I'll be happy for the rest of my life.

And it's not, it didn't really work like that.

Like I could 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 to the Thunderbirds?

I'm like, Oh yeah. And then they didn't equate to the actual happiness.

And I thought that if I like could make my past into something that I'd done all these great things and 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 like add to, you know, your trophy shelf that are going to equate to being happy forever in the future.

It just is impossible.

It sounds like you were living with a bit of a secret throughout your sort of early MMA career and the fact that you had what appeared to be a bit of a concussion based brain injury of sorts, because in your book, you talk about how you realize that 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 photo vision.

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 10 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, like 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, it was really easy for me to get concussion symptoms.

And I'd rested for a couple years, you know, so at first it wasn't so bad, but it just got worse and worse and worse for time, even if I'm winning a fight and, you know, 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 like a headgear and gloves, which are meant to protect you cosmetically, but these gloves are 14 ounces and you're wearing this headgear so your brain is, you know, suspended in fluid.

The larger the thing is, like if the 14 ounces, 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 to address it myself or any kind of weakness in myself.

And I just kept telling myself that, you know, I just have to be perfect and not allow these people to touch me.

I had 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, because 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, instead of the point, Stephanie McMahon slapped me and gave me a concussion, you know, and the, you know, a woman then that has never been a fighter in her life.

And even, you know, it's 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 myself, I just didn't want to face 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, though, like, in my, uh, I first lost, 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.

I went into the fight anyway.

I had a horrible weight cut.

I had the wrong mouth guard, which didn't have the protection on 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, 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, you know, 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, like, dug at me for so long that so many people were, like, saying, like, Rhonda's game plan was bad or whatever this.

And, like, they didn't know that, like, I wasn't, like, present.

I was, like, just trying to survive.

I couldn't see how far away she was.

I, it wasn't like that was my game plan or anything like that.

I was, like, completely disabled.

And when I tried to fight again and I was like, okay, I'll give myself a break and I'll make sure the mouth guard's perfect.

At 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.

They had to deal with wrestlers having, you know, CTE and all kinds of damage from concussions.

And so it's 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, that 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 that I ever had.

I'd 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 to enjoy.

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 think, I remember the commentator saying at the time that you had 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 going to 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.

Were any of your coaches aware of it?

No. Was Edmund aware of it?

No, but I didn't tell anybody.

It was one of those things I just didn't want to face up to having any weakness in myself.

And also, Edmund 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 potentially even more severely, he would emotionally abuse you during training.

I mean, honestly, I can't think of a single coach that I had a great relationship with.

A lot of the coaches were of that bellocoroli kind of generation of they thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best results.

And that was what was in vogue at the time.

And 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 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, 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 just located 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've 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.

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 your 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 diffuse like coaches that were like getting out of hand and 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 got to like get this person 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, it's a huge problem.

I think the whole system is the problem and that it really reinforces these like in these power and balances 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 like, I don't see how like in school, you can have like a teacher, someone comes in to watch the teacher teach, to grade 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 could 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 in in balance that what I was able how I was able to take my relationship with my coach, Edwin and take it from off the rails back on track is to have very distinct boundaries, you know, a lot of times your coach is someone

that you're, you know, it's tough on you, but they're also like, they care about you.

They're a parent, they're a brother, they're, they're a coach too.

But a lot of times it, 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 for it to work out.

And how were those lines blurred with your coach?

Just just as 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 it would like end up turning into like a big argument or something like that.

And I would just end up just trying to like do anything I could to not get in an argument.

And but yeah, like I had to like make a rule at one point.

I was like, you're not allowed to FaceTime me because I want you to just FaceTime me and know where I am at all times and what I'm doing because like, it's my fucking business is my privacy.

And it was just he was always trying to push that boundary.

Now is always pushing back and stuff like that.

And I was like, I don't know, a lot of times I just like I'm like, I just want to train like I don't, I would be just to try and like placate him because if I like just stop talking to him 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'd 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's 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 like into a fatherly role are all coaches.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, they were all like, what was it in Kill Bill?

I was talking about that Bill lost his father early.

So he collected father figures.

Yeah. I collected them.

None of validation from a father figure.

It was something that I was constantly like, pursuing.

But, you know, that, like, 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.

But that was basically the philosophy of all the coaches that I had, they would see someone like Bela Karoli 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 that I've always wondered about you, because you you've always had a steely exterior, you know, you have, especially in the 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 are 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, you're dealing with these men who call you, you know, you're lacking discipline if you miss weight and all of these kinds of things.

You go through 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 need yelled at for crying.

I get yelled at for crying.

I yelled at for crying, so I 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 because, you know, something I was frustrated by something I couldn't I got thrown or I couldn't make something work that I was trying to make work and I would cry out of frustration.

And my mom said that I had turned out where it was full double elimination.

So I ended up winning the tournament by lost a match earlier in the day.

And every single match I would come out crying, bow, win, throw the other girl on her ass, beat her, bow out crying, come into the next match, still crying, beat the other girl, bow out crying the whole day crying until I beat everybody, beat the same girl 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.

I'm very, yeah, and that it's so funny if people think that I'm like, yeah, this emotionalist robot, whatever I fight, that it took a long time to be able to get there to stop like crying in the middle of the match.

Wow. Yeah. Dana says he's never going to 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 2012, I remember that.

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, maybe 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 2020, 12 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 have 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're fighting, I think it was sometimes you're 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, you know, 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 an offer or anytime one of the guys got hurt or fell out, I was always the one that would fill in.

And, you know, if there was like, I always fought on like, 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 a number.

So I wasn't somebody like holding out to only fight on the 4th of July card or New Year's card, which are the best, you know, newer, the highest viewed 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 like the deal that I made when I came in.

And, you know, nobody else has to do that.

But I felt like I owed it to Dana.

I promised them I would be there any time that I needed me and I was.

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

I wouldn't change anything.

You wouldn't change anything?

Time travel is 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. Yeah, and I was just really excited.

I just felt like I was 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 the Furious, Expendables, et cetera.

Was that something that you always had planned or is that something that arose as an opportunity?

The movie stuff just kind of arose as an opportunity.

But, you know, once it became a possibility, I was like, of course I could be the next Bruce Lee, you know, of course I could do great at this.

And I felt like I was a good performer and, you know, 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 14th of 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 a huge turning point for a number of reasons.

You were indestructible, basically.

That's how the whole UFC community and I think the fanbase 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 sort of 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 point, you were at the top of the mountain, you were up in the clouds at that point.

It was framed to everyone that you were 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.

I was a being champion and undefeated and it was just like soul crushing.

It really was. I was just kind of forced to face music before I was ready to.

And I knew that it was going to 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, I just felt so like unjust in a way because I just felt like it was just, there's so much of it, it just wasn't my fault.

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.

I saw a whole bunch of people that I thought were friends just turn on me.

And it was really eye opening in a way though, you know, to who true friends are and what true happiness is and that outward validation wasn't it.

And so I think maybe you might've saved me in a way from going down the path of trying to like chase that high of everybody's approval forever.

But so I guess it was liberating in a way in the long run.

If I was a floner in the war that night, when you left the 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 lip.

Like that's how out of it I was.

I was biting and spitting out chunks of like flesh in my lip.

And people judging me for the decisions I was making all 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 if I was at my full capacity, I don't think anyone could ever beat me.

But I was spit. 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 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 had been holding on to 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 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 then I realized after going into pro wrestling that retiring undefeated and taking the equity that I had with me would have been what was best for the sport.

Even though I know that I'm better than all these girls than 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 betterment of the sport.

But sometimes it still stings a little bit that I'm not recognized as the greatest ever what I know I am.

But my mom said all the time, really quite the other space 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 in 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 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.

Suicide is the kind of thing that becomes more prevalent if it's in your family.

And I've literally had two generations of suicide ahead of me.

It's just something that it's always like 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 take the pain that I had in me and give it to him because that's how I experienced suicide was like, okay, you get to relieve yourself of that pain, but you have to, you pass it on to everybody else.

But my dad was dying anyway.

He wouldn't have been able to prevent his death and he was physically suffering every day.

And 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 under them.

Was that the hardest moment in your personal life?

No, losing my dad was 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, between 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 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 also, just so worn out from, like I said, running on fumes for years on end and literally dragging myself out of bed every morning and having to dig deep every second of the day that I just wanted to dig deep and just disappear.

I had paparazzi and all kinds of crazy shit happening at the time and I just 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 disappear for a while to be left alone.

Were you doing anything professionally during that period?

Or were you just at home?

I mean, I was 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.

But people that have dug deep enough to make it to two Olympics and win 15 fights in a row, not a lot of people understand how much effort that takes.

It 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 it's not the kind of tired that you can take a long sleep from and wake up refreshed.

It's like the kind of tired that takes a year to recover from.

Is that depression in your mind?

Yes, so you could call it depression.

But I didn't see anyone 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.

He was amazing. He really helped drag me out of my own hole.

And I'm very much like a gallum cave creature in general.

I just will not leave my little den.

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.

Which 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 socialize and just be able to talk and communicate.

And so I just kind of reverted back to my hermit tendencies.

And yeah, Trav literally had to drag me out of my hole.

And I'm glad you did.

But yeah, I would easily slide back into the Misty Mountains anytime I was allowed.

Did he understand what you were going through psychologically in that period?

Were you able to communicate that 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 pursuing a goal of athletic greatness since he was six the way that I had.

And so I'm just the disappointment of never winning an Olympic gold medal and never being able to retire.

And if he did, and those kind of lifelong goals, I don't think a lot of people understand that.

But he also was still so supportive in there for me, you know.

And he never got fed up with me moping around and literally crying over eggs if I broke the yoga, be like, I can't eat that.

Cute eggs. And like just being like that for like, yeah, over a year and stuff.

And he's just such incredible love and patience.

And it was just like there for me all the time.

And just like, he made it hold me when I needed it.

Even if he didn't like understand why I was so sad, he was like 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.

You're gonna get me at some point.

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 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.

Yeah, I had to get out of the cave and in front of like a crowd of thousands of people alive, 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 Horsemen, Shaina, Jessamyn, and Marina, that were like friends that I made.

I mean, I knew Marina back from Judo and I met Shaina and Jessamyn through MMA and we really became really close -knit group.

And for me, for how hard it was for me to socialize and make friends, these were like my girls, you know?

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 like, you know, like filming action movies and fight choreography, except for it was kind of like in its purest form where you have to tell the story.

Like in the movie, you have like 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.

And I was just fascinated with that, especially, you know, Wannabe Bruce Lee.

And they 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 five hours, kind of a thing.

And I love that feeling of being lost in something.

To my friend, I was telling somebody the other day, like passion is my passion.

I just love to be passionate about things.

And, you know, I guess that flow state is fun.

And I just love being in it.

And so yeah, then I started just training for fun and then, and, 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 do some pro wrestling for a couple of 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, like a calling much more than a pursuit, if that made sense.

You know, once upon a time, if you had a business idea, it was exceptionally difficult to get going.

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So things like these conversation cards, which we sell, we've sold using Shopify and it only took us a couple of clicks to get going.

So why did we choose Shopify for a number of reasons, but I think one of the big ones, which goes unappreciated is their checkout system converts 36 % better compared to other platforms.

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And for many of you, I think it could change yours.

One of the things that surprised me, and again, it's because if we only get to see this sort of 2D representation of someone on a screen, whether they're through a wrestling career or UFC career, which is 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, it 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, you know, that's also why I really enjoyed being a heel, which I, you know, 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, you know, 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 know you think of such a big business.

You imagine they got script writers and the scripts are written years ago.

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

It's so needlessly dangerous.

Like no one can like a lot of times people can't rehearse things or change last minute.

A lot of times you see them outside there 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 WWE?

Yes, yeah, I think we all did.

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 health care and all these kinds of things from what I read in your book.

Yep. Which is pretty crazy.

I mean, they would never be allowed in where I'm from in the UK.

And it's sort of Vince McMahon's kingdom.

Yeah. Well, supposedly he's out now because they caught him paying company funds so they can show some girl's head in the office and do a threesome with her with Johnny Laurenitis.

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.

But yeah, Bruce Prichard, who's there now, who's 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 Emmanuel, who bought it out from WME, is going to 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, you know, people that he'd hired in the past.

Bruce Prichard being number one of them.

Bruce Prichard is still there, I believe.

Yeah. John Laurinitis 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, 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 dates.

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, I, 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.

But, you know, we got checked out and there's, you know, the baby seemed just fine.

But then I miscarried a couple of weeks later, so I 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 I was just like depressed and like 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 80 embryos since we wanted to have like three or four kids.

And the first one that we used actually worked, that's, you know, La Kale, my daughter now.

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 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 like, nobody talks about.

So, and so do 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 in 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 the other people that are going through the same thing.

And a lot of times it's like a woman, you couldn't feel like it's, you know, 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 po and I got my boys.

So, you know, I got a lot more 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, et cetera.

For those people that have never experienced it, what is that like?

What is the complexity of the emotions that you experience and thoughts?

It's just a grind. It's a grind and it's really hard on you mentally and physically your body.

And like, like this last cycle, I wasn't allowed to, like, you know, workout 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 kinds 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, berate me about these kinds of things about like at the time, like not having a kid when I was trying and stuff like that.

And that's, I guess the way 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 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. 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 like a baby, like, I mean, my doctor was like, if you probably, if you stopped smoking and drinking, you could have a baby, like, you know, smoke a bunch of weed and drinking, you can 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 like go for kids?

And so, you know, luckily, you know, 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 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 and understand because, you know, I think people typically think that fertility is a female thing.

But the fertility 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 a 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, I think, off the top of my head have grown 90 % in popularity over the last couple of couple of years.

And because we're having our careers being extended further and a variety of other things, but 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, you know, 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, like, it is because they're 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 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 crushing itself too, you know, so 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 like, you know, retired in my mid 30s and be able to spend like all my time with my husband and my kids and like to be there for them and to be able not to have to like worry about so much, you know, and get to just focus on them.

And yeah, I don't know.

Just day to day, I just, I mean, I say like I'm retired, but like I still do stuff, but I don't do stuff with the intention of like, I have to pay the bills with this.

And so, yeah, I mean, I'm not like only like only my husband, only a wife and mom, like I started writing as just a way to like 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, you know, mental energy that I'm just turning inward and like hurting myself with.

And so, 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 been made into a comic book and, which I touch on out of the book too, but it's also like doing these kind of things, not with the intention of like making millions of dollars or, you know, impressing a bunch of people, but just

that the act of it is so fun.

Like I'm a, I'm interning right now at the story department at WME.

That's I was working on in the car.

Yeah, I'm learning how to be a reader and write coverages and just, you know, read lots of, lots of scripts and make me a better writer and like learn like the dark art of like writing coverages, which people don't see.

They're not in public, but to be able to just still 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 degrading.

You know, it'd been mismanaged for years.

There was more dirt than there was 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 then more rewarding to me than reading a whole morning of positive comments on the freaking picture is actually like going out and like seeing this land become better.

And like that kind of stuff is like really rewarding and I don't have to worry about, you know, promoting it or what people will think of it or how much money I'm making from it.

So yeah, like 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 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 like Russell in front of are like small crowds.

I love being like in a small non televised crowd.

That's my favorite and like 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.

Like 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 not that 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 like, you know, judo isn't like a big sport that there's going to be crowds of people cheering for you for.

You know, anyone that's crazy enough to want to win Olympic gold medal and 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.

I just love that process of going from knowing nothing about something to mastering.

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 in fighting?

Yeah, I guess like, you know, enter that flow state, I guess, of being like so lost and 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've 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.

Like, 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.

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, like, you know, like just 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, it's 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?

Yeah, I mean, I've tried, but you know, my mom was a psychologist.

So, you know, anyone that I went to talk to, I was just kind of like, you're not as smart as my mom.

Yeah, but I mean, I've attempted by that.

I've never found anyone that I really like clicked with.

But I've given it a couple of shots, but I mean, 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.

I'm going to 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. There's more of examples that he gave me of how to actually be a man and how to be a great husband.

My mom and dad were so in love with each other.

I remember they would make out over our breakfast and be like, oh, yeah, I know.

But he was so in love with my mom and she is so in love with him.

And I think that's why I was smart enough to wait until Traff 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 that he was the one that was always like, you know, Ronnie's a sleeper.

She's going to 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, I didn't never forgot it, I guess.

I think he was right.

You named after him, right?

He's called Ron. Yeah, I was supposed to be Ronald John Rousey Jr., but I'm a girl, so I'm Rhonda 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 the sort 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, I, 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, you know, I used to stay up to three, four AM in the morning in the UK to watch you fight, because you were like nothing I'd ever seen.

You know, you define the division, you basically created the concept of women fighting in the UFC.

And you did it in a way with a style 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 in 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 their next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

Uh oh. Why does everyone get scared when I go to this diary, okay?

No. Ah, okay. So you're 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.

They're probably intimate moments with my husband that I can't share, but we have a good time.

You'll be happy for the shout out.

I was like, that's what matters.

Ronda Rousey, Our Fight, out, available everywhere right now.

Um, an incredible book, and I recommend everyone to go and get it.

Thank you so much, Ronda.

Thank you for having me.

Bye.

[Ronda Rousey: The Price of Mastery, Trauma, and Finding Peace Beyond the Octagon]-[Ronda Rousey (Greatest Women's Fighter Ever): The Truth Behind My Fighting, I Kept This A Secret My Entire Career, WWE Is A Mess & Vince McMahon Is Still Running It!]

📋 Summary

The Unseen Burden of Greatness: A Journey Through Ronda Rousey’s Life

The Roots of Resilience and Pain

The Obsession with Mastery

The Secret Battle: Concussions and CTE

The Myth of Indestructibility

Life Beyond the Arena

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Ronda Rousey: The Price of Mastery, Trauma, and Finding Peace Beyond the Octagon]-[Ronda Rousey (Greatest Women's Fighter Ever): The Truth Behind My Fighting, I Kept This A Secret My Entire Career, WWE Is A Mess & Vince McMahon Is Still Running It!]

📋 Summary

The Unseen Burden of Greatness: A Journey Through Ronda Rousey’s Life

The Roots of Resilience and Pain

The Obsession with Mastery

The Secret Battle: Concussions and CTE

The Myth of Indestructibility

Life Beyond the Arena

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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