Issue 149

December 2016

Ronda Rousey has spent 13 months in the wilderness following her catastrophic knockout defeat to Holly Holm in Australia.

But behind the scenes, in Los Angeles, a rebuilding process has been underway to rejuvenate ‘Rowdy’ after her first defeat and recreate the wrecking ball that made MMA history.

Here, experts – coaches, psychologists, nutritionists – discuss what she has to do to rediscover her greatness.

Was her time off just what she needed to heal and rejuvenate for an athlete burnt out under a media spotlight? Can she draw strength from her tight-knit team? And when Rousey does step back into the Octagon, can she be better, bolder and as belligerent as before?

No entry

A great secrecy has been built around the return of Ronda Rousey. There are walls around walls. The security is impenetrable. When Rousey went back into light training, the doors of the gym were locked shut.

To prying eyes, at least. There was the creation of a moratorium against media interest.

Head coach Edmond Tarverdyan had a screaming match with one prominent American writer who has been a regular visitor to the Glendale Fighting Club, telling him to “f**k off”, but adding that she looked “world class” in training.

Rousey bolted on another occasion when journalists turned up at the gym, eager to learn the former champion’s mindset, to study her fighting psyche on her return.

They were met with firm resistance. Rousey stormed past an LA Times sports writer, into her SUV, and sped off to her beachside home in Venice 20 miles away.

But has it really been an annus horribilis for the greatest female crossover star in fight sport history? Sure, no artistry painted, no adulation, no challenges. But away from the glare, Rousey has been in repair, and in her mind, a champion in recess.

“I choose to be undefeated,” she said previously, when there was the heartfelt and disturbing admission in the false, transparent comfort of a TV studio alongside Ellen DeGeneres.

The 29-year-old admitted she felt suicidal in the post-fight trauma of defeat to Holly Holm, far away from home Down Under. It was as honest as it was alarming.

From despair, Rousey had the message that “the best things come from the worst things” and this is now her moment to show a return from adversity, to the arena that has defined her, turned her into an icon for women and an actress in Hollywood.

Limiting herself to rare sightings in public and strictly giving no interviews – though she has filmed the remake of Patrick Swayze’s Road House during her fighting absence – she now sees her “actual purpose” not as winning all the time, but showing that “everyone has their moment of picking themselves off the floor.”

This is that moment. Training to exhaustion through another fight camp and then that fierce-faced walk to the UFC Octagon against Brazilian Amanda Nunes, the third woman in the revolving door of champions in the women’s 135lb division after Rousey left the lobby.

Holm was beaten by Miesha Tate, who then lost to Nunes. Yet Queen Ronda considers the division to be all her own.

The sassy fighter’s return climb to that summit will be an intensely private affair. Necessarily so, perhaps.

Even AnnMaria DeMars - the fighter’s mother – a sage voice and very much a mentor, moreover, is keeping shtum. Not a word or return call from the cool academic who has been her daughter’s greatest advocate. And even a critic of coach Tarverdyan.

Mind control

Time for herself, UFC president Dana White has repeated over and over, has been deserved for the former women’s bantamweight champion.

He’s almost fielding calls from the media for one of the fight organization’s leading stars – and stories.

But did Holly Holm crack the Rousey code? Can she return and have a powerful, long reign wearing the UFC crown? Would another defeat, or knockout loss, spell the end for the career of the pathfinder?

And what’s the narrative behind the scenes? Several experts in differing fields of MMA with experience in rebuilding champions offered fascinating insights into what Rousey and her team will have been producing for her comeback.

For Brian Cain, the sports psychologist who’s worked with a clutch of UFC belt holders – including Georges St Pierre, Rich Franklin, Michael Bisping, Rashad Evans and Vitor Belfort – Rousey’s handlers will have been locating the “black box” which holds the keys to her defeat to Holm a year ago.

“My suggestion would be, after coming back from a loss like Georges St Pierre – when he lost to Matt Serra – is you have to locate the black box. It’s very much like when a plane crashes, the scientists and researchers go looking for the black box, they find the information as to why it happened.

"In life there are winners and there are learners. And the people who learn, like St Pierre did after that fight, can get back on top of the world and stay there if they keep learning.”

Cain believes they’ve likely watched the Holm fight a lot, as well as a lot of tape on Nunes in order to get their game plan right and try and perfect Ronda’s skills and strategy.

“Some people learn to lose and other people lose and learn,” he says.

“I have to believe that Ronda Rousey – being the Olympic athlete she is and the competitor she is – is going to lose and learn and come back stronger than we’ve ever seen.”

The time off, believes Cain, will have created a healing process. “Having worked with eight UFC world champions, they are all so very different in terms of what they like to do with their free time.

"I would not read too much into that. I think keeping a lower profile will just ensure we see the best Ronda we’ve ever seen.

“Sometimes huge amounts of pressure and the spotlight give you a distorted sense of reality and it can have a negative effect on your process. That was proven with GSP after he beat Matt Hughes going into the Serra fight.

"He said there was so much hype around him being invincible and the best in the world and being the new king of the welterweight division that when he fought Matt Serra – who won a reality show – Georges started to believe the hype.

“He didn’t prepare as well as he should have. His process wasn’t as on point as it had been for other fights.

"As we know, it’s not the best fighter who wins, it’s the one who fights the best.

"Who’s the better fighter between Rousey and Nunes? Well, on paper, Rousey is the best there has ever been. She’s a pioneer and the face of women’s MMA all over the world and probably always will be. But it doesn’t matter who is better on paper. All that matters is who fights better on the night.”

Loyalty pays

Life coach Brian McCready, who also works with several fighters, believes Rousey will have rid herself of the resentment she would have felt at losing to Holm.

He explains: “Even in her training camp, it will have an impact. The body holds resentment. We can take years off our life by holding on to resentment.

“You have to release that. If it’s really deep, we have to lower the brain frequency, come down to alpha-beta, find out where it is.

"Sometimes people consciously don’t want to give it up. But they’ll give it up subliminally because they’ll be holding it somewhere in the body.”

McCready also insists there’s a great positive force in Rousey staying with her team, in spite of her mother’s open criticism of Tarverdyan last summer.

“You should never be influenced by your family members. It’s a testament to her strength if she has kept the same team. But they will also have rebuilt her.

“The scale of the rebuild will depend on the strength of the character we’re talking about. She’ll have had this narrative that everything is going to go this way, but when the script has been torn up, she’ll look back and say, ‘Well, wasn’t that a nice experience in the end?’

“It created a better story. The fans will love her more. Anyone can be positive when things are going well. The acid test is: can you keep that positivity and that self-belief when the wheels have come off?

"That’s the true test. She has tasted what it’s like to be on the other end. I fully expect to see the best Rousey we’ve ever seen. I think she will kick on from here. The loss will have done her good.”

Fight night

Nutritionist Dr Paul Biondych insists one important consideration close to the contest will be self-control.

“The biggest thing would be cortisol control right before the event walking in. Ronda’s mindset is she’s never the challenger. Even when she loses, she’s the champion.

"She’ll be walking in the ring as the champion looking to get her belt back. She puts a lot of pressure on herself.

“When you talk to any sports person who competes on a large scale, controlling emotions, controlling adrenaline, makes or breaks you. We all know athletes who in the gym can go 10 rounds, but they get in the ring or cage and after five minutes they look exhausted.

"They can’t breathe. Why is that? That has a direct correlation with adrenaline and cortisol.”

On the other side of the Octagon, the team preparing Nunes knows what they must exploit.

Marcus ‘Conan’ Silveira, the hugely respected head coach at American Top Team, believes Rousey will be carrying ‘a scar’ from her knockout defeat.

“Amanda is dangerous to any fighter. After Ronda lost, I felt it would be difficult for her to get back again. Mentally and psychologically I think she’s not going to be the way she was before,” Silveira explains.

“The way she lost usually leaves a scar. We’re not going to take her lightly or think she’s going to be an easy fight. Amanda is preparing herself the way she should prepare. But when you have been on top for so long and somebody takes you out the way Holly did, there is some damage there that you carry the rest of your life.”

Duke Roufus, head coach at Roufusport, has experience of turning former champions’ careers around. He believes Rousey’s sparring could be key to combating the past, insisting that ‘waking up the echoes’ will be vital.

“I’d make sure she got as much sparring as possible and with as many training partners who can mimic the look of Amanda Nunes. You need to get her confidence back.

“Ronda will have to figure out new entries for her judo. She’s done well with striking in the past but it was her dominant judo that set up all those awesome armbars. Can she create a new game plan that allows her judo to become dominant again? When Anthony Pettis fought Charles Oliveira he looked like WEC Anthony.

He submitted a guy who is hard to submit in MMA. Sometimes that’s what you’ve got to do. Wake up those echoes.”

Mike Winkeljohn, who masterminded Holm’s KO of Rousey, says he would have the returning fighter sparring, too.

“I don’t like my fighters taking too many headshots in training, but Ronda needs that to regain her confidence. Amanda hits very hard, we know that. It’s good that Ronda is sparring with USA Olympic boxer Mikaela Mayer, it will speed her reactions and footwork.”

What all the experts believe is Rousey will have been rebuilt, refocused and rejuvenated ahead of UFC 207. Whether that’s enough for the woman who changed the game to regain her crown remains to be seen.

Rousey's records

Ronda didn’t become a global superstar by chance – she is the most successful female fighter ever to step into the cage, and has the stats to prove it.

She was the first woman to win a UFC title, the first to headline an Octagon pay-per-view and the only one to ever make six successful title defenses.

She’s also the only UFC fighter in modern history to record two sub-20-second victories in title fights and she’s the only fighter in Pride/UFC/Strikeforce/WEC history to win four championship fights in less than a minute.

Superfight

Dana White insists Rousey wants to make a long-awaited fight with Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino if she can get her title back, but the Brazilian admits she doubts the fight will ever happen.

“I don’t think the fight can happen,” she says. “I already did five fights under contract with the UFC, and I did two fights at 140lb to open the door for this, for the opportunity for (Rousey fight) to happen. But it won’t happen. I don’t believe it anymore.

“I’ll leave this question for the fans: do you think the UFC wants this girl who they’ve said is the best in the world to lose to me?”

Back to basics

Andy Ryan, head coach at Ryano MMA in Dublin and judo black belt insists Rousey must go back to her armbarring best to save her MMA future.

“I’m a Rousey fight fan, but when I watched her you could see her striking was way below that elite level,” Ryan says.

“She was fooling people, and herself, when she was doing her routines on the pads and stuff. It’s like a dance. You can teach anyone a dance routine, but in a real-life situation that just doesn’t work.

“Why change what you’re good at? She’s worked on all these new things and it worked for a couple of fights.

"But she’s been exposed now. And some of these other girls are going to be a lot more confident against her. She needs to close the distance, take Nunes down and armbar her... If she can.”