The UFC champ told PEOPLE at the ‘Stars on Mars’ preview event on Thursday that her daughter, La’akea Makalapuaokalanipō Browne, “doesn’t respond to pain”
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Ronda Rousey’s daughter is proof the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!
Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE on Thursday for her Stars on Mars preview event, the former UFC champion and mixed martial artist gushed about her daughter La’akea Makalapuaokalanipō Browne, saying the little girl — who turns 2 in September — takes after her.
“Oh, she’s definitely going to be tough. She doesn’t respond to pain so much,” Rousey, 36, says. “She just fell and scraped her knee today and she was just like… she didn’t even cry. She just kind of grunts it out!”
“The world isn’t ready for this little girl,” Rousey jokes.
Rousey shares La’akea with husband Travis Browne. The pair got married in Browne’s native Hawaii in August 2017 and welcomed La’akea in September 2021.
Since then, Rousey has shared plenty of snaps with her daughter on Instagram. But to film Stars on Mars — which features a cast of “celebronauts” like Lance Armstrong and Tallulah Willis competing in weekly missions on a simulated human colony on Mars — she was separated from La’akea.
“That was the most challenging thing, just being away from my baby,” Rousey says of making the series, which is hosted by William Shatner. “I had a really hard time being away from her, and she was only 1½ when I was gone. It’s the cutest age and everything like that.”
Her mom guilt only got worse, Rousey says, the longer filming went on. “I was having a better and better experience, that I felt worse and worse about being away from her,” Rousey says. “And so, the mom guilt was compounding by the day, and I think that was more difficult than any part of the experience itself.”
As for how Rousey did on Stars on Mars, that’ll have to wait until the show airs. But no prize could compare to the moment she reunited with La’akea after filming ended.
“When she saw me, she wanted to jump into my arms and then she wanted me to put her down and just run around the house with me and then pick her up,” the athlete recalls to PEOPLE. “And it was when she finally calmed down enough for me to hold her in my arms and for us to watch Frozen together, it was really our celebration,”
“Then that night — she sleeps in the bed with us — and with her little head in my nook, and I fell sleep holding her that night,” Rousey recalls. “It was the most amazing feeling after being away for so long.”
“I’m just so much happier that I’m no longer ruminating over myself all day,” Rousey shares with PEOPLE on Thursday’s carpet at Hollywood’s Scum & Villainy Cantina. “I’m always thinking about her and focused on her and… I don’t know. Am I more considerate?
“I think the best part about it is that it’s mentally made me more healthy and made me stop beating myself up so much because I’m so concerned with taking care of her.”
