Issue 108

December 2013

Ronda Rousey has become the UFC’s brightest star attracting mainstream attention the world over, and she now looks destined to take on Hollywood too. But in a world exclusive with Fighters Only, the TUF 18 coach reveals she has a lot more fighting to do yet.

Following her successful Octagon debut, exhausted UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey had one goal in mind – rest. And who could blame her, considering the incomparable media blitz Rousey has endured from the moment she signed on as the UFC’s first female fighter?

From HBO to Time Magazine, and Rolling Stone to Forbes – plus everything in between – Rousey’s commitments have created a dizzying schedule unseen by any previous UFC fighter, including former media darling Brock Lesnar, according to UFC president Dana White. That rest? It never came.

“Not really, no,” Rousey concedes to Fighters Only. “I got 10 days off from media stuff, but then I ended up not planning a vacation, and so I just trained the whole time. I never took a vacation. I probably should, but there’s never time, and when I do have time, I don’t want to go anywhere alone.”

Instead, the 26-year-old retreated to her California home and returned quickly to the intense training regimen that has been a part of her daily routine for as long as she can remember. A two-time Olympic judoka and daughter of America’s first-ever world judo champion, physical preparation is simply a part of who she has become.

“I love Venice (Beach). Where else am I going to go that I like better than Venice?” she says with a shrug. “What else am I going to do that I like more than training? So I stayed at home and trained. What else am I going to do? I get so depressed when I don’t work out. If I just sat on the couch and didn’t do anything for a week, it wouldn’t be fun. I wouldn’t enjoy it. I don’t want to sit on the couch.”

And so she didn’t. Instead, the UFC’s newest superstar did exactly the opposite, remaining squarely in the public’s eye as she graced the cover of Maxim, took a role as head coach on The Ultimate Fighter 18, and even agreed to try her hand at acting, accepting a role in The Expendables 3 at the behest of screenwriter and star Sylvester Stallone.

“It’s a little nerve-racking, but Stallone is really, really cool,” Rousey says. “He keeps me relaxed all the time. I’m around all these Hollywood action stars, and I think the key is just staying relaxed and not being intimidated. I really do believe that sports are a metaphor for life, and if I can just zone everything out and focus on doing something like I do with athletics, then I can do it with anything. I just have to practice.

“I have an acting coach, and she coaches me. Sly has also been helping me a lot. He gives me little exercises and stuff to do. I do a lot of reading out loud now. Like on the drive on the way over here, I was reading aloud and trying to put lots of emphasis on everything while I’m talking. But also slow down when I talk because I have a tendency to talk really fast, especially when I’m doing interviews all the time. 

“I grew up in a house with all women, so I’m used to having four seconds to get my opinion out. So I’m practicing slowing down my speech, taking time and savoring every word.” It may be the only time this year Rousey ever truly slows down. 

‘I’m constantly on reaction mode’

When I meet Rousey for our interview, it’s 8:30am on a Saturday morning. It was the champ that requested such an early slot – an almost-unheard-of hour to interview a fighter at their own invitation. But Rousey was hoping to finish the appointment early enough to squeeze in some personal time in the afternoon before she was whisked off to another series of media obligations.

One can’t help but wonder when, if ever, Rousey has time to sit back and enjoy her accomplishments – not just the impressive wins and championship belts but also her impact on the history of MMA. After all, UFC boss White has openly admitted he decided to add women to the UFC roster for one reason and one reason only: Rousey.

‘Rowdy’ admits she doesn’t really ever take the time to sit back and soak it all in. “It’s not a burden, but I would say that most times when some crazy s**t happens to somebody, they have a couple of days to digest it and really think about it and put it in perspective – kind of log it and move on,” she explains. “I don’t have that reflection period. I’m constantly on reaction mode, and it’s much harder for me to adapt and adjust to every individual situation. 

“There’s so much f**king s**t that happens within a day, every day, that I don’t have any time to sit down and be like, ‘So, this happened. What is your opinion on this? OK.’ There’s no real reflection or learning period. I’m just constantly reacting and on my feet. I like it like that. I get bored of having any kind of real monotony. But moderation is always a good thing, and I do not have a life of moderation at all. I can’t think of anything that I have in moderation. Food, maybe, but that’s it.”

Rousey says she did recently enjoy a rare opportunity to take in some peace and quiet, as she embarked on a cross-country road trip with fellow former Olympic judoka Taraje Williams-Murray. Rousey encouraged Williams-Murray to relocate to southern California, much in the same way Rousey’s best friend Marina Shafir did in 2012. And when he accepted, she came along for the journey.

It’s a self-sustaining support system that Rousey has built from her longtime acquaintances rather than those that have shown up lately as her fame has increased. “I just helped my friend Taraje move to Los Angeles; he is another person I’ve known for decades,” she explains. “We were on two Olympic teams together, and we lived together at the fighter house back in Boston. 

“There was a bunch of us there, and it’s funny because everyone thought me and Taraje were the two people that would not get along at all. We were right across the hall from each other, and he was super OCD, like perfect and wearing a pressed suit all the time. I’m just like the Tasmanian Devil (cartoon character) in my room, but we found a way. I kept my mess in my room, and we co-existed so well. It was really funny because we ended up being best friends in the house, even though everyone thought we were going to kill each other. 

“Me and my best friend Marina didn’t really like each other when we first met either. I have this weird history with my friends. But I’m in a position now where all these people I’ve had great relationships with over the years, I can actually be a resource for them. Taraje is starting his own financial advisory firm, and he wants to change his environment. I always try to get all my good friends to come out to LA, so I was like, ‘Move here! Come to my house.’”

Rousey says the pair drove 50-straight hours across the country, stopping only briefly for an ill-fated attempt to rest. “We stopped at a rest-stop and slept, sitting up, for like an hour-and-a-half, and then we were like, ‘Just go,’” Rousey explains. “I had 50 hours of driving to reflect, which is one reason why I love road trips.”

‘If everyone was fantastic, then fantastic would be average’

The most important question, it seems, is whether or not Rousey is spreading herself too thin. After all, with seven first-round submission wins in seven career appearances, her fighting skills are well-established. 

And as a former Olympic medalist, her dedication to athletic glory is proven as well. But she has admitted in the past she’s focused on becoming a crossover hit, one that is simultaneously successful as both a fighter and a Hollywood star.

She works hard to carefully balance each world, and so far at least is proving she is capable of doing both. “I lucked out that The Expendables was being filmed in Bulgaria because there is a lot of great judo, jiu-jitsu and grappling there, and we’re close to Armenia, so my team will actually be there,” Rousey says. “They were willing to fly in whatever training partners I need and use them for extras on the movie. They’re taking totally good care of me.

“My camp will still last 10 weeks, and I’m going to be in super good shape. I have to because it’s a movie. If anything, it’s a good thing. It just changes my environment and keeps me having to be more disciplined throughout the whole year instead of letting yourself rest heavy and then cutting down toward the end. It’s like your average weight that you’re at all the time is what you’re most used to performing at, so it’s going to force me to stay in that fighting shape.”

Rousey’s next in-cage appearance comes in December when she and fellow TUF 18 coach Miesha Tate renew their rivalry in the co-feature of UFC 168, which takes place at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena. The two were initially expected to serve as headliners for the card, but when the potential to add the rematch between UFC middleweight champ Chris Weidman and former title holder Anderson Silva to the top of the card came along, UFC officials simply couldn’t say no.

Rousey insists she was more than happy to slide down the bill one slot. “I feel awesome about it,” says the 26-year-old. “I think me being co-main really made it possible for me to do The Expendables 3 because if I was the main event, the responsibility of carrying the card falls on me. 

“Like my last fight, I was charging on all that media. I was like, ‘This fight has to do well. It has to f**king do well, or it falls on me.’ If it hadn’t done well, nobody was going to call up Urijah Faber and be like, ‘Yo, the card didn’t do that great. You suck.’ No. And no one was going to call up ‘Hendo’ and Machida. There were so many things going on, and I had so much weight on me for the last fight because I was carrying the card. Now, this card, I really think it’s going to be the biggest UFC card ever. 

“It’s just like all the responsibility has been lifted off of me. It’s a big worry that I don’t have. I know the card is going to perform. I’m happier with Weidman-Silva being the main. I have so much more time to go and do other things, and I probably can do a lot less media for this fight. So much of the work is already done. The Ultimate Fighter is already done and has been playing out the whole time I’ve been away filming.”

So it seems once again, there will be no rest, at least not for now. For every small amount of space she carves into her schedule, a new request is quickly there to fill the hole. Rousey has teased she may only have another two years left in her fighting career, a possibility that UFC boss White has deemed preposterous. But whatever she ultimately decides to do next, Rousey has proven she’s capable of accomplishing it – at any cost.

“I need to rest sometimes,” Rousey finally admits. “I go through Sundays, and I can’t take days off. I have a problem. Whenever I have busy days with lots of media appointments that force me to not train a little bit, I appreciate them, even though I feel like crap at the end of it. I get sore when I do nothing.”

It’s just the sort of imbalance that seems to be present in the personality of anybody that’s truly great at something in life. It seems in order to become the best in a particular field, there needs to be an almost unhealthy commitment to that accomplishment. Rousey understands exactly what that means.

“That’s why average is average,” Rousey adds. “If everyone was fantastic, fantastic would be average. Then what the f**k would fantastic be?”

The Ultimate Fighter: Making history

Ronda Rousey has made little effort to hide her disdain for her recent stint as coach opposite rival Miesha Tate on The Ultimate Fighter 18. Even prior to the record-breaking series being broadcast (as it featured women for the first time), Rousey says she knew her competitive drive was going to result in a less-than-flattering depiction of her character. 

True to her promise, she has indeed been fiercely intense on the series, and her dedication to winning obviously takes precedence over any concern for her public image. Rousey insists that was entirely by design.

“Regardless of what everyone thinks of me and how I come off – everyone might think that I’m a crazy, psycho, competitive bitch – I promise you, you can go up and ask anyone who was on my team how I was as a coach, and they will 100% say I did the best I possibly could under the circumstances,” she explains. 

“All I thought about was them. I obsessed over them, and whereas Miesha was spending a lot more time worried that her hair looked good for every shot, I was freaking out making sure that everyone was OK. 

“I purposefully didn’t wear make-up or do my hair up a lot of the time just to show everyone that it wasn’t about me. I was so concerned about the kids on TUF that I wasn’t thinking at all about my image.

"I can’t be perfect, and I cared more about them than how I came across. That’s the result of my priorities, and I don’t regret my priorities. "

Still, even a frustrated, somewhat angry (or at least visibly annoyed) Rousey can’t help but flash a smile when she recalls her time with her team. She says she’s kept up with everyone on her team via group text, and her genuine happiness when discussing the fighters she coached is impossible to fake.

“I adore the kids,” she beams. “I love them so much. It’s terrible. I didn’t know I had so many mommy instincts. The second they were like, ‘These are your eight, and they are yours,’ I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. All these kids’ hopes and dreams and lives depend on them doing as well as possible in this thing,’ and I took it so seriously. 

“I love them so much for trusting me with that responsibility – and it was a big responsibility and one I wasn’t very used to. And it’s an environment where everyone is purposefully trying to get a reaction out of you. It’s not an environment really tailored for optimal performance. It’s an environment that’s really for the maximum drama.”

In fairness, the show has delivered on its fair share of inter-coach drama. The rivalry between Rousey and Tate is definitely not contrived, and the tension between the two has delivered the type of on-camera moments producers were surely dreaming of from the moment the two were first cast as coaches.

But when you put all that aside, Rousey believes she still did a commendable job. “With all the s**t I have going on around me, what I need in my life is people trying to defer the drama as much as possible,” she says. “Everyone was trying to instigate it around me for six weeks straight while I’m under a lot of pressure. I’m trying to help these kids out. It was taxing. The one thing I really took from the experience that I really appreciated was the relationship I was able to build with the kids on my team. 

“I keep calling them kids, and it’s stupid, because some of them are my age, but they’re my babies. I didn’t expect it to be that way, but you see them, and you see that everybody is in this unfamiliar environment, and they’re nervous, and they look at you like, ‘What do I do?’ 

“In my head, I’m like, ‘I don’t know what the f**k you’re supposed to do,’ but I have to act like, ‘Well, you’re going to be fantastic, and this is what you’re going to do.’ I had to have this air of certainty even though I wasn’t certain at all. It was a lot of feigned air of certainty from me.”

Liz Carmouche fan club

While Ronda Rousey was unquestionably the star of February’s UFC 157 event, her opponent, Liz Carmouche, proved the perfect foil. Incredibly likable in the build-up to the event, Carmouche made history as the first openly gay fighter in UFC history and gave Rousey the toughest challenge of her MMA career.

While Rousey ended the fight with 11 seconds left in round one – via her trademark armbar – there were a few tense moments for the champ. Carmouche tried to secure a rear-naked choke and as Rousey defended, her opponent’s forearm slipped across her mouth.

Some fans wondered if Rousey was actually biting the arm as a means of defense, but Carmouche quickly clarified post-fight that wasn’t the case. 

“When she did that cross-face, and she knocked my mouth guard out, she was completely honest with it. She said, ‘Ronda didn’t bite. I was trying to knock her teeth out with my forearm.’ That girl was honest, and I f**king love her.”

Rousey attended July’s UFC on Fox 8 event, where Carmouche controlled Brazilian contender Jessica Andrade en route to a second-round TKO win.

Rousey says she enjoyed every moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever cheered as loudly for someone who wasn’t my teammate.”