Issue 089

June 2012

She’s the hottest new star in mixed martial arts and on a collision course with the UFC Octagon… Fighters Only manages to last more than one round with armbar queen and Strikeforce champion Ronda Rousey.

NEED TO KNOW

Name: Ronda Rousey

Age: 25

Started: 2011

Team: Hayastan

Division: Bantamweight

Style: Judo

Record: 5-0

After years of disregard and dismissal, UFC president Dana White is finally warming to the idea of introducing women’s MMA to the world’s greatest Octagon, and it’s thanks to one fighter more than any other – ‘Rowdy’ Ronda Rousey.

A legitimate overnight sensation, the former Olympic judoka bronze medalist has taken women’s MMA by storm. In just 12 months she’s rocketed from exciting amateur prospect to undoubtedly the pound-for-pound most marketable and exciting champion in any of the female weight divisions.

And yet it could all have been so very different. After all, she looked on mixed martial arts as a bit of a joke when she first encountered it. “I remember the first day I was aware MMA existed,” recalls Rousey, in an exclusive interview with Fighters Only. “I was at Team Hayastan in California when I was a kid and Karo (Parisyan) was wearing these shorty-shorts that said ‘The Heat’ on the butt. I remember thinking it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life. He was punching at the camera and doing all this stuff and I was just sitting there laughing and thinking that he just looked so dumb… Little did I know that one day I would be in shorts just as short on national TV doing exactly the same thing.”

Well, not exactly the same thing. After all, as talented as he was, Parisyan never started his career by going on an unbeaten run of first-round stoppage victories that elevated him to the top of the pound-for-pound rankings. However, what he did do was encourage Rousey to make the transition to the cage a few years later.

“After Beijing (2008 Olympic Games) I took a year off to relax and just bartend, but I was still going grappling whenever I could, like twice a week,” Rousey says. “Back when I was in Boston, training judo, me and Rick Hawn, who now fights in Bellator, we used to live at the same house, work at the same job – as cashiers – and we trained together too. So Rick would run practice every Thursday when Jimmy (Pedro) wasn’t there, and we’d pump up the music and strip out of our gi’s and just train no-gi. And it was just so much fun. 

“So when I had that year off I just wanted to train no-gi whenever I felt like it. It didn’t always have to be on a Thursday. So I started going and working out with the guys at Hayastan, and they started talking to me about competing in MMA. At first I was thinking more like I would train MMA but compete in judo. Stay in shape by grappling and then turn up at judo tournaments. But the coach told me to go screw myself, so I decided to compete inside the cage.”

Compete is something of an understatement. Devour probably fits a little better. After bagging three armbar submissions inside a minute as an amateur, Rousey continued that vein of form as a pro, with former Strikeforce champion Miesha Tate’s limb her fifth paid armbar opening-round success inside a year. It was that performance that forced White to open the door to the possibility of women’s fights in the UFC.

“I’ve always said there aren’t enough good women to create an entire division. But we will have these great one-off fights like Ronda Rousey versus Miesha Tate. That was a big fight and a lot of people were interested because those two women can actually really fight,” White said after the pair’s Strikeforce bantamweight clash in March. “But I think it’s going to be very hard to find worthy opponents for Rousey. She has all the tools and ability to become a really huge star, but she’s going to lack opponents... I hope I’m wrong.”

UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta, who agrees to disagree with White regarding the potential of the women’s sport, took things one step further. “I think Rousey has a tremendous amount of potential,” he said. “She’s got a great personality. She’s got the ability to grab the public’s attention, how she talks, and then she goes in there and backs it up. I mean, it’s almost like Ali when he would go in there and call out the round. It’s that kind of aura about her. I’m really positive on her and Miesha. I was very impressed.”

As for the fight against Tate, Rousey admits she was never going to go in there pulling her punches. “I just wanted to end it as quickly as possible, so, of course, I wanted to take it down,” she admits. “I never expected her to come out swinging. She opened the door for me to take her down coming out like that. 

“People said afterwards, ‘She hit you once, she touched you once.’ But I was like, ‘Yeah, but she was on the ground in eight seconds.’ I’ll happily take a hit and land the takedown. And I never had a scratch on me. You don’t get hit because you’re a bad striker, everybody gets hit. My style is to win fights and get hit as little as possible, and I don’t see any reason to change that. Seeing as I only started a year ago, I think I’ve done pretty good so far with my style.”

It’s a style, naturally, born out of judo. But it’s ever evolving thanks to a varied team that Rousey has immersed herself in, spread across Los Angeles. “I wrestle with Armenians in the valley, at SK Golden Boys in Sherman Oaks. Then I do my grappling in North Hollywood at Team Hayastan, and I go to Glendale Fighting Club for my striking. And I also do some grappling at 10th Planet with Eddie Bravo sometimes too. I like to move around and go to different places. I do have my core group of coaches, but I like to move around a lot.

“I enjoy the flexibility of MMA, in every way you wanna use that term. In terms of styles, fighting how I want to as long as it works. It’s not like I have to be here in my cubicle at 8am every day. I feel like it gives me a lot of freedom and a lot of opportunity for creativity within my career. I love the flexibility of it all.”

However, there remains one aspect of combat sports that she doesn’t enjoy… “Testosterone poisoning, that’s what my mom calls it,” she adds. “When I’m fighting with a guy who’s not used to being thrown about by a girl, and then I throw him and he tries to absolutely murder me, that’s not cool. That’s one reason why I train where I train. I like to know my training partners and the people around me to watch me, because I have too much pride to say no. If someone asks me to go, and they look like they’re going to kill me, or if someone just goes off, then I need to have someone else around who can step in and take over.”

And having good friends and teammates has been the key to Rousey maintaining her focus during her rapid rise to the top of the women’s sport. She prides herself on the influences of her coaches and sparring partners, keeping her grounded. Keeping her mind on the job and out of the celebrity circus. “When I go to all these events and I meet up with fan people and stuff and they’re telling me how awesome I am, I then have to go home where I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by a lot of people who aren’t just yes men. 

“I don’t just have my own press around me. When I’m away I get a lot of compliments from people about parts of my game that are already done. But when I’m home all I get is people telling me about the things I need to do. There is no one around me that feeds my ego at home. In fact, I think they’re all working to counteract my ego. Everyone is constantly telling me to stop thinking so much of myself. 

“After my last fight I just hid away indoors, I didn’t go partying or anything. I was just chilling out and playing Donkey Kong and eating ice-cream and stuff. It was cool. But again, that’s the people around me, they protect me. People trying to contact me are saying that it’s tougher to get a hold of me now as everyone is asking, ‘What do you want with Rousey?’ But to me nothing has changed. Except maybe, I have to wear a little more make-up when I go out.”

So what exactly does the future hold for the hottest new champion in mixed martial arts? “Who knows, dude? A year ago things were crazy and they were difficult, now things are still difficult – just in a very, very cool way,” Rousey says. “A year from now I still wanna have my belt, but other than that I’m happy to let things play out organically.

“I’d like to defend my belt against Sarah Kaufman next. I really feel like she deserves a shot at the title and I know she feels like she was cheated out of her chance when I got the fight. I don’t agree with that, I deserved it as evidence that I have the title now. But she deserves a shot next. And I’ll be happy to give her a reason to not complain any more.”

She adds: “This has all happened so quickly, but thank God it did because I was struggling and I didn’t know what to do with my life. Now I feel like my life is really going in the direction I want it to. I’m happy with how things are going and while it has gone off like a whirlwind and it has gotten to be a little overwhelming at times, I can’t help but be grateful for every bit if it. Sometimes I complain, but I don’t really mean it.”

THE ARMBAR MASTER

“The armbar is one thing that my Mom taught me to do ever since I was a little kid. She used to like to say, ‘Everything in the world ends with a juji-gatame,’ which is the judo name for a straight-arm lock. And it’s so funny when people say, ‘You’re a one-trick pony, you’re a one-trick pony,’ as people don’t realize there are 25 entirely unique tricks that ended up there. It’s not like there is only one set-up into an armbar, there’s tons of ways to get there. The key to a good armbar submission isn’t the actual finish itself, it’s the set-up and the several steps before that which were the key.”