Ronda Rousey reflects on her losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes in a recent podcast interview.
With the release of her new book, former UFC champion Ronda Rousey has been making the interview rounds. Rousey hasn’t talked much publicly about her final few fights in the UFC, two back-to-back knockout losses at the hands of Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes. Until now. In a recent podcast interview, Rousey explains why she thinks she lost those fights and how it tarnished her spotless legacy.
“I had taken punishment until I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “When it got to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore, I was vilified as ‘She was all hype, she was just lucky.’ People making all these judgements about me in a fight where my first loss, my mouth guard was bad, I literally came into that fight concussed from slipping down some stairs already after all these years of concussions. I had an absolutely terrible weight cut, which means you have less fluid in your brain to protect it.”
Rousey might be re-writing history just a tad bit. Holm defeated Rouse with a masterful head kick in the second round. Listing excuses for why that happened cheapens the talent Holm possesses and discredits the hard work and fight IQ that Holm showed.
3 lost Ronda Rousey MMA fights
After the loss Rousey effectively went into hiding, literally covering her face with a pillow from cameras and refusing to do any media. When she announced she’d return to fight Nunes she also refused all pre-fight media, a requirement of all fighters. Those moves, touted as unsportsmanlike and screamed of a “sore loser” are part of the reason she was given the reception she did, not just because of the loss.
She just continues to make excuses, “I was out on my feet for the entire fight. I was trying to make it look like I wasn’t hurt, but I wasn’t there cognitively. I couldn’t think as fast or judge distance. Just from that one fight, everybody felt like, ‘Oh she’s a fraud.’ I know that like I’m the greatest fighter that has ever lived, but when it got to a point that I had taken so much neurological damage that I couldn’t take it anymore, suddenly everything I had accomplished meant nothing.”
Ronda Rousey says she was ‘vilified’ after back-to-back losses
Ronda Rousey: I know, that like, I'm the greatest fighter that has ever lived.pic.twitter.com/J9EbAcF4Lz
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) April 3, 2024
Rousey also went after the fans and critics who doubted that she was ever that good, despite going undefeated up to that point and singlehandedly creating a path for women to fight in the UFC.
“Then after the second fight, I saw how all these people I was coming back to fight for had suddenly turned against me. All of my appreciation for them turned to resentment.”
Rousey was undoubtably a pioneer for WMMA, espeically within the UFC. There would be no women’s divisions if Rosuey hadn’t come along to prove there was a market for it. And she deserves respect for that and many of her other accolades. But WMMA advanced and Rousey never did, that’s the cold hard truth wether she wants to admit it or not.
