Ronda Rousey

[GeneChing]

Did you know there were articles in the SI issue? Well, they aren't really articles. Just little Q&As with the models. Here's the one for A Pair of Knockouts featuring Ronda and Caroline Wozniacki. I'm quoting this from page 184 at the end of the photo spread.

WHAT DID WE BRING HOME? A few tennis pointers from Caroline and some Wushu (a Chinese martial art) tips from Ronda.

Wushu tips from Ronda.

In the SI 2015 issue.



In honor of SNL40, I have only one thing to say...

'scwhing!'

[GeneChing]

Anyone catch Ronda on Conan last night? I made it through Conan's monologue but then fell asleep. It's been a long week and I was exhausted.

UFC's Ronda Rousey discusses her Sports Illustrated swimsuit appearance


MMA fighter Ronda Rousey attends the 2013 Fox Sports Media Group Upfront after-party in New York City. (Theo Wargo / Getty Images)
By Lance Pugmire

Ronda Rousey says she was stoked to work with photographer Walter Iooss Jr. for SI swimsuit issue

Fighters throughout the years have found unique ways to promote a coming bout, but Ronda Rousey’s turn inside the pages of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue is a new standard.

Rousey, 28, of Venice, appeared in a four-page SI spread earlier this month. That package was supplemented by more photos on the magazine’s website shot by well-known photographer Walter Iooss Jr.

The photos precede by weeks Rousey’s Feb. 28 Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s bantamweight title defense against No. 1-ranked contender Cat Zingano at Staples Center.

“There wasn’t any hesitation at all,” Rousey said. “I was stoked from the very beginning. Why would I hesitate? … Walter Iooss is a genius.”

Why? Well, Rousey (10-0) didn’t grow up as a girly girl. She admitted to a gathering of reporters this week at her gym in Glendale that she didn’t wear makeup until she was 21.

“Because I was bartending and I needed tips,” Rousey said.

She’s talked about being tomboy-ish as a youth, developing combat skills that would make her an Olympic bronze medalist in judo in 2008, while showing past disdain around the UFC octagon for ring card girl and Maxim magazine cover girl Arianny Celeste.

“I couldn’t even smile not awkwardly for a photo” as a child, Rousey said. “I had that Chandler Bing smile. I couldn’t do it right. You had to surprise me.

“You never know. I just followed where everything went. I’m really happy with where I am now, and I’m glad I had no clue growing up, and I’m happy that I grew up a little slower and wasn’t into that stuff in high school. I wouldn’t change anything.”

Now, Rousey is a veteran of three major films, including “The Expendables 3,” and the coming “The Fast and the Furious 7,” and “Entourage.”

She graced the SI pages under the headline, “A Pair of Knockouts,” with tennis champion Caroline Wozniacki.

“If you were asked to be in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue, I bet you’d do it,” Rousey said to The Times’ male UFC reporter. “Don’t blush. I don’t know, Walter Iooss is a genius, I think he could make you look rockin’.”

As she braces for the main event at Staples Center, Rousey said she remains driven while relishing the trappings of her success.

“I’m happy to have been one of the unpopular kids back then, because it makes everything so much more satisfying now,” she said.

Before participating in the shoot, Rousey fell back on an agreement she had made previously with her mother about such pictorials.

“Whatever you’re not willing to show in public, you won’t show in a magazine,” Rousey said. “If I’m going to tan on a beach with my top on, or top off face down, how is that different?”

She was happy with the finished product, joking that readers couldn’t see her “cash and prizes.”

“I try to promote a healthier body image,” Rousey said. “I think that does a lot more to change what women expect of themselves than not doing anything at all. Changing the media images at men changes what women expect of themselves.”

Ronda Rousey: 'Fighters should get paid more than ring-card girls'
Elias Cepeda
FOX Sports
FEB 20, 2015 10:17a ET


Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC,Mike Roach/Zuffa LLC

Ronda Rousey believes that fighters like her should always make more money than UFC ring-card engineers like Arianny Celeste.

Bantamweight world champion Ronda Rousey isn't usually one to criticize her promoter, the UFC, but during a media day this week the two-time judo Olympian did criticize one aspect of fighter pay. "I think that they should get paid more than the ring girls," she said.

How much Octagon card holders like Arianny Celeste and Brittney Palmer get paid isn't publicly known. Then again, neither is how much UFC fighters are paid, since fight purses are often just the tip of the iceberg with regards to pay, at least for big names like Rousey.

In any case, Rousey seemed to be suggesting that many UFC fighters get paid less than the models who sit in bikinis nearby as they fight, which is not hard to believe. The UFC's "Octagon girls" usually work far more dates than a fighter has fights, in any given year, and are pretty heavily promoted.

"I don't know if the ring girls get paid too much or the fighters don't get paid enough," the UFC 184 headliner continued.

"But yeah. There's definitely a lot more in what the fighters do than what they do. So, I think that's one thing that's unfair."

Rousey isn't complaining about her own compensation, however. She says that the UFC has gone above and beyond in what they pay her.

"There's times where they give me more than they're contractually obligated to or more than I even expect. That's why I always trust them so much. Even if they didn't ever give me anything extra, I would still be happy, because you know what I made as an Olympian? Nothing. It cost me money," she explained.

"I got my first house, I got a car, what else do I need?" Rousey said. "I don't need a private island. My house is paid off. My car is paid off. I just need to buy dog food and pay my taxes and that's pretty much it. I have no need to want. The only thing I want to do now is fight and they made that possible for me and I'm eternally grateful."

[GeneChing]

After all, Rousey vs Zingano was shorter than a movie trailer, and we need more Ronda.

We've seen her in Expendables 3 last year already.

Coming soon:
Furious 7 April 3, 2015
Entourage June 5, 20915
Mile 22 Just announced

[GeneChing]

Ronda isn't really sorry, nor should she be. This is what is called "dojo justice".

[sanjuro_ronin]

LMAO, classic.

[GeneChing]

Walmart -- Yes, Walmart -- Deems Ronda Rousey's Memoir Too Violent To Sell In Stores
By D'Arcy Maine | Apr 5, 2015
espnW.com


UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey discusses the progress made in women's mixed martial arts, her belief in herself, and a comment made by former boxer Laila Ali that she could beat Rousey.

Between her dominance in the Octagon, her Hollywood turn in "Furious 7" and the upcoming "Entourage" movie and her WWE WrestleMania appearance, Ronda Rousey is clearly the "It Girl" of the moment. However, it seems like one major corporation is firmly not on #TeamRousey.

With her memoir "My Fight/Your Fight" set to be released next month, Walmart has announced it will not be selling the book because it's too violent. If you're currently muttering to yourself "Doesn't Walmart sell guns in its stores?" know you're not alone in your thinking. Rousey's sister Maria Burns Ortiz, who co-authored the book, posted a similar sentiment on Twitter.

Maria Burns Ortiz @BurnsOrtiz
Follow

Wal-Mart will sell guns, but not a book. Taking that whole pen is mightier than the sword thing seriously. #myfightyourfight
11:51 AM - 4 Apr 2015

To recap: According to Walmart, Ronda Rousey is too violent but guns are totally cool. OK then.

Alas...Walmart. When they cut our magazine from their newsstands, it cut nearly a quarter of our newsstand distribution.

[GeneChing]

Yes, That Is Ronda Rousey Dressed Up Like A Pirate Wench
By D'Arcy Maine | Apr 20, 2015
espnW.com

The best moments from Ronda Rousey's SportsCenter 14-Second Challenges are highlighted.

Ronda Rousey is a UFC champion, Olympic medalist, movie star, author, all-around badass and now ... a pirate wench.

Yes, you read that correctly. Her words, not mine.

Rousey, her sister Jen and a friend went to a Renaissance fair over the weekend, donning their best period costumes and carrying drinking horns. Of course. It was apparently so much fun that Rousey went ahead and volunteered their services for future fairs and events.

rondarousey(Verified)3 days ago
Time travel renaissance pleasure faire! with my amazing sister Jen (the genius photographer) and @qosbaszler - any time someone needs a pirate wench, we're officially prepared (and yes, we DO have drinking horns


75.9k likes445 comments

Nothing says "middle ages" quite like a Batman corset.

See something entertaining on social media that you think deserves to be shared? Let me know on Twitter, @darcymaine_espn.

Ronda would make a better ninjette.

[GeneChing]

Hope her book does well.

SI cover: The Unbreakable Ronda Rousey
by SI Wire
Posted: Tue May. 12, 2015


Photo: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images
UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has been everywhere in 2015, and now she can add the cover of Sports Illustrated to that list.

The 28-year-old stands atop SI.com's latest pound for pound rankings, an honor that can point to the fact that she has won her last two fights by a combined 30 seconds. First there was her 16-second victory over Alexis Davis by KO in July 2014, prompting UFC president Dana White to say Rousey doesn't earn the respect she deserves because of her gender.

In February, Rousey became the first MMA fighter to appear in the SI Swimsuit Issue. Later that month, she continued her reign with a 14-second armbar takedown of Cat Zingano, the fastest finish of any kind in a UFC championship fight (you can even watch it in claymation). It upped Rousey's career MMA record to 11–0 and marked the ninth time she has won by armbar.

Since the swift victory over Zingano, Rousey has been on a bit of a whirlwind tour as her fame only continues to grow. She stopped by The Tonight Show and demonstrated her famous armbar move on an unlucky yet thoroughly impressed Jimmy Fallon.

She was even challenged by a Houston Texans cheerleader who was a state champion boxer and thinks she has a plan that could stymie Rousey. And of course there was Rousey's memorable appearance at WresleMania 31, when she teamed up with The Rock.

But Rousey knows that with fame, there comes a price.

She tried to use an alter ego - Brynn Campbell - on the dating app Tinder, to no avail. Instead, she says she mostly hangs out with her dog Mochi.

“S---,” she says, “the only person I'm making out with is my dog.”

Rousey says she has the support of her family and friends to help navigate her through the rough waters of being a celebrity.

"What I realized is once you become socially unhealthy, it’s impossible to stay psychologically healthy,” she says. “[Celebrities] get surrounded by people that benefit off of them in some way. Every single person that they see in the day either gains financial stability, status, something from that person. And so the people around you reflect reality back to you."

When she's not appearing in Fast and Furious 7 or the upcoming Entourage, Rousey even found time to write a book.

The book, entitled My Fight/Your Fight, hits shelves Tuesday and recounts career moments such as her one-armed judo victory at the 2007 World Championships.

Could Rousey be on the way to retiring from the MMA? Only time will tell. “The shorter my fights are, the longer I can fight.” Rousey says...."I want to stop before it really erodes me.”

For more on Rousey, check out L. Jon Wertheim's story in this week's Sports Illustrated (subscribe here).

Also in this issue: More on the Deflategate fallout, and features on Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin, the new look San Diego Padres and the 1985 NBA draft.

Subscribers and newsstands not in Michigan, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Eastern Missouri will receive this cover.

[Jimbo]

I highly recommend Ronda's new book, My Fight, Your Fight. I'm generally not much into reading autobiographies of MMA fighters, having read or browsed a few of them. But since Ronda's my current favorite fighter, I was definitely going to read this. I received it yesterday and am half-done with it already. The book is VERY well-written and is difficult to put down. I really do not understand Wal-Mart's refusal to carry it.

[GeneChing]

This gal is on FIRE!

Ronda Rousey: The World's Most Dangerous Woman
How did Ronda Rousey go from living in her car to being MMA's most unstoppable force?
By Erik Hedegaard May 28, 2015


Ronda Rousey, the most dominant female fighter on Earth. Bret Harman/Washington Post/Getty

Ronda Rousey is peacefully asleep inside her wee Venice Beach, California, bungalow, her breathing rhythmic, only one of her feet stirring. She's naked, because that's how she sleeps, not much of a threat to anyone and so unlike how she is when she's in the Ultimate Fighting Championship's Octagon. At times like those, she's a broad-shouldered, evil-eyed fighting fury, capable of wicked overhand rights, various elbow strikes, thudding head punches, an entire panoply of judo throws, mounts, tosses and sweeps, and, of course, her signature fight-ending killer move, the armbar submission.

Not that the world has gotten a chance to see all of this mayhem yet. Her fights, three amateur and 11 pro, with not a single loss among them, tend to end in less than 60 seconds. At the age of 28, she has in four years become the most dominant mixed-martial-arts fighter in the sport's history and was in fact recently named "the most dominant athlete alive," beating out names like LeBron and Mayweather. On the fight scene, there's never, ever really been anyone quite like her. "She's a beast, man," says UFC president Dana White. "She's the greatest athlete I've ever worked with. With her, it's like the Tyson era, like, how fast is she gonna destroy somebody, and in what manner? Ronda's one in a million."

Up in her bedroom, inside her bungalow, at a few minutes before nine, Rousey's right foot has begun to stir a little more, maybe even twitch a few times. She's alone there, no one to bother her, but she still needs to sleep. Her next fight, in August against Bethe Correia, is not that far off. She has to train, loves to train, never wants to stop training. Plus, whereas five years ago, after taking time off from her early career as a bronze-medal-winning Olympic judoka, she was a booze-swilling, pot-smoking ****tail waitress who was so hard up for cash that she lived out of her cheapo Honda Accord for a spell, she now has her days filled with all kinds of celebrity-type obligations, interviews, photo shoots and various calls from movie people.

Her right foot is jerking around, and her eyelids begin to flutter. The alarm clock next to her is set to go off at nine.

It is now one minute until, and suddenly, in bed, her eyes pop open. Silence surrounds her. She looks at her clock, and all she can think is "Yes! Yeah!" By way of explanation, an hour later — after she's thrown on an old Misfits T-shirt and sweatpants, slurped down a chia-bowl breakfast ("I love the bowl! I crave it!"), said good morning to her big-galoot Argentinian mastiff, Mochi, wandered around her messy, clothing-cluttered living room, looking for stuff to throw in her backpack, and at no time giving any thought whatsoever to putting on makeup — she says to a visiting reporter, "See, for some reason, I feel like it's a victory if I wake up one minute before the alarm. It's like I'm in a contest with myself, with my foot kicking around until it wakes up the rest of my body. It's the stupidest thing. But it makes me feel like I've already won something."

And so this is how she lives, all day, every day, 24 hours a day, for days and days on end. It's all about winning, in any way that she can.

Until Rousey, the UFC didn't even have a women's division. The very idea of two girls going at it made White uncomfortable. "I don't want to see two women beatin' on each other," he told Time in 2007.

Back then, the most desirable place for MMA women was in a much smaller organization called Strikeforce. It's where all the early great pros fought, including Gina Carano, who retired to go into movies, and Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos, who would later be stripped of her championship title for a steroid violation, and where Rousey first came on the scene, in 2011.

At the time, Rousey had an amateur MMA record of 3-0, her wins accomplished in less than two minutes total. After two equally quick victories in Strikeforce, she was given the chance to take on bantamweight titleholder Miesha Tate. This led to a nasty rivalry that continues to this day. Rousey wrote Tate off thusly: "I don't have respect for Miesha's inconsistency. One minute it's about the sport, the next she is wearing booty shorts." And later snorting, "I'm gonna talk a bunch of ****. And I'm gonna break a couple of girls' arms, and I'm not gonna feel the least bit sorry about it."

This got her lots of bad press, but in their early 2012 contest, she backed up her words. At 4:27 in the first round, she hyperextended Tate's elbow with an armbar, ripping through ligaments and forcing her to tap out. Strikeforce later labeled it the Submission of the Year.

Like everyone else, however, it wasn't just Rousey's fight skills that caught White's attention. "She's beautiful, intelligent and very pro-women, which I respect," he says. "And she is psychotically competitive." Which is true. Take the book tour for her new autobiography, My Fight/Your Fight. She'd been dreading it, until she read some report about Kim Kardashian's crazy new book tour and suddenly changed her mind: "I was like, 'Hell, no! I need mine to be crazier than that! Mine's going to be the best book tour that ever happened! Kim Kardashian, I will beat your book tour!' "

In this, as in all things, she will not fail, because she cannot fail, and she cannot fail because she's a winner. It's an unassailable logic that was first drilled into her by her mom, AnnMaria De Mars, herself a former judo champion, who, if she saw her teenage daughter relaxing in bed, say, would jump on her and attempt to get her in an armbar, the message being: Never let your guard down.

All these things made Rousey the kind of complete package and talent that convinced White and the UFC that women at a fight could be more than card-girl eye candy. In late 2012, he announced the formation of a women's division, installing Rousey as its bantamweight champion. Her record now stands at 5-0. Most recently, she took on Cat Zingano, a match that ended with an armbar in 14 seconds, making it the fastest title fight in the UFC's 21-year history. Rousey reportedly got $130,000 for the win, after which she renegotiated her contract for an undisclosed but presumably far grander amount and one better suited to her new role as the UFC's biggest star.

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[GeneChing]

Rousey needed just 14 seconds to beat her last opponent. "She's the greatest athlete I've worked with," says the UFC's White. Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Getty

Along the way, the only fighter to get past the first round with Rousey in the UFC has been Tate, who during their 2013 rematch managed to make it to the third round before once again finding herself on the mat, with Rousey bending her elbow back against the joint until she tapped out rather than have it broken. It was another winning armbar. Afterward, she offered her hand to Rousey, but Rousey refused to shake it. The blood between them was that bad, a situation that had been compounded when they faced off as opposing coaches on Fox Sports' UFC reality show The Ultimate Fighter, with Rousey constantly giving Tate the finger and snarling stuff like, "**** you, *****!" The end result of all this has been to turn Rousey into what the pro-wrestling world calls a heel, the fighter everyone loves to hate. Rousey's response has always been, "I like it that way."

"There are certain things I admire about her as an athlete and a fighter," says Tate, "but I don't respect her as a person. There's an ugly side to her. Yeah, she's just nasty."

Zipping along the highway in her messy white Range Rover toward her gym today, the hard-case Rousey is not exactly the one on display. She's laughing loudly and talking about her 2013 fight with Liz Carmouche and how at one point, her bra nearly got tugged aside. "I have a weigh-in bra that's smaller and lighter and I'm a girl, so it's cuter, too, and I wanna look cute," she says. "But on fight night, who cares about looking cute? It needs to be effective, only on that particular fight night, I didn't have an effective bra. I just had two cute bras, so I had to wear one of them." She laughs again, thinking about what could have happened had some quick rearranging during the fight gone wrong. "At one point, I was perilously close to showing everyone my nipples, so the second I got her off my back, my mind shifted to 'Cover yourself up, girl!' And when Liz saw that, she kicked me right in the chest. Which she was entirely right to do. I would have done it if I was her."

And then there are the shorts the girls wear, just the way they ride up. "The first Miesha fight, she got her hooks in from behind, and I was like, 'Oh, I can get out of here easy.' But if I did, I would flash everyone, so I had to figure out a way to pull her feet out where my business was facing down, not facing the world." She giggles. "And then I have a phobia about camel toe. I swear to God, every time after I win, even before I take my mouth guard out, I pull my shorts down, and it's because I have a phobia of high-def camel toe, people zooming in on the Internet and everything. It's always, first thing, fix the camel toe!"

Such problems. The guys don't have such problems. Good thing Rousey says Reebok is working with her on an anti-camel-toe design.

Regarding makeup, there's a number of reasons why she doesn't wear it. Firstly, her mom never wore it, and until recently, what with her media appearances and all, she thought it was stupid too. Also, she says, "I don't feel the need to be the hot chick every second of the day." And finally, she says, "I like to be able to surprise people when I turn it on. I want it to be like the movie She's All That, when they unveil her. I mean, if you try all the time, there's no unveiling: The veil has already dropped, and that's who the **** you are, and I still want the veil." She pauses, gooses the gas, switches lanes with hardly a look. "And, you know, being hard to figure out helps keep people interested."

And yet, after a while, hanging out with her, she eventually returns to form and starts happily bashing her opponents, past, future and potential. On Correia, her upcoming challenger in UFC 190, which figures to be a rout, with Vegas bookmakers making Rousey the 1250 favorite (i.e., a $1,250 successful bet gets you only $100 in winnings): "She started talking **** about how I look, like, 'I'm gonna do her a favor and punch that wart off her face.' I'm like, 'A, it's a beauty mark — go ask Cindy Crawford about that.' And B, she's dumb." On Tate: "She's dumb too. She's made a whole career out of getting her ass kicked by me."

When she gets going like this, it's almost like she can't help it, like the way her foot twitches unbidden to wake her up in the morning and beat the alarm. It's just the way she is. She has no regrets about it, either. "I don't believe too much in regretting ****," she says. "It's a very wasteful use of energy." In her eyes, all these things she says about the other girls, they should weep with gratitude. "This chick I'm fighting next will never know how many things I've done for her to make sure I could personally kick her ass and people would be entertained by it. See, you let the plant grow and then you **** the plant up. If only they knew how much I do for them."

She pulls into a Starbucks, runs inside, grabs iced coffees for herself and her trainer, darts back to her car, hops inside, and off she goes again.

"I like quoting Lord of the Rings," she says along the way. " 'My list of allies grows thin! My list of enemies grows long!' " And, brother, does she ever seem pleased.

How she got this way, she can't really say, but maybe it has something to do with the circumstances of her birth and upbringing. In her first six years, nobody knew whether she'd ever speak an intelligent sentence, such were the aftereffects of being born with an umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. It could be that her gibberish and mumblings were signs of brain damage. No one knew, and her parents — Ron, an aerospace-industry executive, and De Mars, an educational psychologist and statistician — moved when she was three from Riverside, California, to Jamestown, North Dakota, in part to be near the Minot State University speech therapists, who set about bringing her vocal cords to their senses. It wasn't easy, and it took time. And it was especially frustrating for Ronda given how advanced her sisters were. "I'm dumb, Mom," she once said. "Maria and Jennifer have the words. I don't have the words." "No, you're not, you're very smart," her mother told her. Which, later on in high school, proved to be true, especially in nonverbal areas of study like math, science and art, where she excelled.

She was a daddy's girl, loved fishing with her dad and learned how to hunt at his knee. When Ronda was four, however, he broke his back in a sledding accident, which was complicated by a rare blood disorder that prevented his injuries from healing. Four years later, he committed suicide rather than put his family through what doctors told him would be a painful and inevitable decline.

"He was gone," says Rousey, "and we slowly got used to it. Athletics were the thing that I had, yeah, and, um, I'm still doing that."

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[GeneChing]

Rousey throwing her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, a judo champion in her own right, in 2001. Courtesy of Ronda Rousey

The family returned to California and settled in Santa Monica, where De Mars worked three jobs to support her kids, which now included yet another daughter, Julia. The kids all had to give judo a try — in 1984, De Mars was the first American ever to win at the World Judo Championships, so she had certain expectations — but Ronda was the only one to keep at it. And she did so, monomaniacally. In school, she didn't go to a single party or dance and never went out on a date. All she did in her spare time was train. By age 16, she was so thickly muscled that the other kids called her Savage or Miss Man. They'd grab at her arms and yell, "Flex, flex, flex!" — so humiliating her that she started wearing a long-sleeve hoodie year-round. "Eighty-five degrees out, I wouldn't take it off," she says. "I wouldn't let anybody see my arms." Even today, when most fighters flex their muscles during weigh-ins, she rarely does, keeping them to her side instead, or curling them behind her back.

Her ears, too, were a problem. They'd get pulpy and swollen after a fight; one ear had to be cut open and drained, Ronda just wanted to go home, but her mom — who was as hard on Ronda as Ronda was on herself — made her train instead, and the drained ear bled all over the place, leaving it permanently cauliflowered and another source of embarrassment at school.

Then again, those arms did have their uses. When she was 14, she and her friend Jackie would go down to the Third Street Promenade, where Jackie acted as her Don King, sidling up to delinquent toughs and saying, "I bet my friend can beat you up for $10.'' They'd all then retire to a park, where Ronda would take the hapless kid down in a chokehold or armbar, relieve him of his money, split the proceeds with her friend and go buy a couple of Frappuccinos.

During her sop****re year, she dropped out to concentrate on judo. One day, her mom sat her down for a talk. The Olympic trials were coming up. "If you don't want to go to the Olympics," her mom said, "I have no problem telling everyone to go **** themselves." "No, this is what I want to do," Ronda said. "OK," her mom said, "because if you want to be top in the world, it's going to take a lot of gut-wrenching, balls-to-the-wall work, and that's it." Undeterred, at the age of 17, Ronda became the youngest judoka in the world to qualify for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

It was not a pleasant experience. For one thing, she became bulimic while constantly struggling to make her weight class. Nor was she really allowed to vent any of her feelings or frustrations. At the time, she hadn't perfected her trash-talking skill set. Her mom, during her competing years, used to push opponents and say stuff like, "*****, I'm going to break your ****ing arm today." But that was before women's judo was introduced to the Olympics, where such talk is not tolerated, and until entering MMA, Ronda had to stifle herself and just carry on. Or cry, which she did often. In fact, almost every time she made even the slightest mistake in a practice session, or lost a fight, or came close to losing a fight, or sometimes even when she won a fight, she would break down in tears, an uncomfortable but uncontrollable reaction that has never gone away. It used to humiliate her, but she's come to accept it as just one of those things left over from her early, nonspeaking years, when, she says, "crying was the only way I could tell people I was upset." No matter what, though, she has always refused to submit in a fight, even if it meant her elbow would get broken. "Anytime anyone ever got me in an armbar, I'm like, 'Well, I guess it's going.' Yeah. I never tapped out in judo."

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[GeneChing]

Rousey won the bronze in 2008, but afterward quit the sport and fell into a depression before taking up MMA. Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty

Four years after Athens came her big win at the Beijing Olympics. She was unhappy that it was only for a bronze medal, however, even though it made her the first American woman judoka to ever even place in the Games. Shortly thereafter, she went into a tailspin and quit her sport. She just didn't want to fight anymore. It ****ed her off to no end that, after all her hard work, her only reward from the U.S. Olympic Committee was "10 grand and a handshake." She spent the next year living like lots of regular people do. She worked at a bar. She held down the graveyard shift at a 24 Hour Fitness. Drank, smoked weed, caroused, lived in her Honda for a while, went out with another guy who was just plain bad, and put up with her mom, who called every guy she dated Bob, even to their face, never bothering to learn their real names, since they were all jerks and wouldn't be around for long, so why should she bother?

Eventually, she decided to give professional MMA a shot, which turned out to be exactly the thing to do. "Right now, I'm the baddest chick on the planet," she says. "And no matter what else happens to me, I have that. If I don't, I'm just a loser and I'm back in 2008, a drunk bartender living off of french fries and smoking menthols. And no one wants to smoke menthols. Menthols are disgusting."

Inside the Glendale Fighting Club, Rousey's head trainer, Edmond Tarverdyan, the club's wiry, smooth-tempered owner and a champion Muay Thai fighter from Armenia who has been working with Rousey since 2010, is out on the floor holding up a pair of mitts. Rousey stands facing him, feet planted, head down, gloved hands up. On the walls surrounding her are posters from her fights. On another wall, De Mars, who continues to give her daughter advice ("If she wants to take it, fine, and if she doesn't, she doesn't"), has in large letters scrawled some of her sayings, or "mom-isms," as Rousey calls them: "Winning is a habit." "Nobody's easy until after you beat them."

"We did a lot of straight shots, now we need to do angles," Tarverdyan tells Rousey. She nods, strikes.

"Beautiful," he says. "All right, great. Stay in place. No extra. That's good. OK, now, your right hand. Yeah, feel the shadow. Go jab and then go. OK, now you're out there, you're not afraid, you were never afraid. Beautiful, look at that!"

This dance goes on for almost an hour, with Rousey trying to do everything Tarverdyan asks, her eyes following him with nearly solicitous affection.

When the session is over, he says, "She's a born fighter. Here, we feel bad for her sparring partners. She knocks everybody out, so we hire female world boxing champions because they can take the punishment."

Rousey is nodding and beaming. Their relationship is oddly intimate. Every day, when Rousey buys him an iced coffee, she takes a straw and removes the paper up to the tip before inserting it into the cup. "Edmond's little straw," she will say. "I know there's extra love on that straw, even if he never notices it and never will." For his part, when Rousey was poor, Tarverdyan would order a ton of food at restaurants, telling her it was the Armenian way, just so she could get it to go at the end, never knowing it was his gift to her.

"The master plan is to retire undefeated," she says, "and walk away and not have anything left to prove. It'll be hard to know when it's time, but it'll help to have something else to get into, which is why I'm putting time into acting and the book and buying properties."

"I'll know when it's time," says Tarverdyan.

"Yeah," says Rousey. "I trust you. I only have so much ring time that my body can endure. I've had four surgeries on my knees, arthritis in my neck, separated my shoulders, broken my nose. I'm just gonna hope that science advances faster than I can deteriorate. Because what am I gonna do? Put a perfect body into the ground? What's the point of that?"

A while later, she's telling what it's like for her right after winning a fight and she's in the shower. "I start to giggle my ass off," she says. "It's my first time alone. And for some reason, right then in the shower, it takes over, how happy I am, and I laugh my ass off. I mean, when was the last time you laughed like that at nothing that was funny?" She pauses. "I need to feel pressure. I need to feel like winning is the biggest deal in the ****ing universe. I wouldn't do as well without people watching. I'd still win. But I wouldn't do it with such pizazz."

Pizazz?

"Yeah, that's it. I fight with pizazz. It's a different sound from everyone else. It's the sound of pizazz."

Later in the afternoon, on the way home, Rousey says, "I think it's funny when people think that because I'm a female athlete that I must be a lesbian, and I'm like, 'No, I love men so much that I beat the **** out of girls for a living just to take them all out.' " She's joking, of course, but at the moment, she doesn't have a boyfriend. There are various reasons for that, though. For one, she's too busy. For another, she says, "the kind of guys I'm into have lots of desirable women willing to do backflips for them — and, I mean, if you can look like a man standing next to me, then you're a real ****ing man — but I'm just not doing any backflips."


Rousey photographed in Santa Monica, California. Peggy Sirota

And then there's the third and biggest reason. Rousey isn't scared of much, but she is scared of men she likes.

"This one guy, he's pretty well-known, he keeps texting me to go do this or that, and I'm such a *****, I won't say yes. And I want to. But I just ***** out. And then I met this guy at a gas station the other day — we had a moment with our credit cards not working right — and he asked me out. He was cute, but I was just a big ol' *****. I was like, 'I don't know. I gotta lot of ****, bro.' I bro'd him, and I didn't want to." She sighs. "I don't know what my problem is, and why I get so shy that I have trouble speaking, when I'm so bold in other areas." She pops her hand on the steering wheel. "I have an actual issue, I do believe."

Rousey really is complex, maybe even bordering on an amusingly appealing weirdo. She suffers from constant nightmares about zombie attacks. Is "deathly ticklish. I will turn into a ****ing ninja if you try to tickle me." Steals spoons from restaurants and in so doing is overjoyed. Worries what you will think if you look closely at the panties on the floor in her place, as in, "He probably thinks I got raped by Wolverine last night because my dog munches on the crotch of all my underwear, and they have teeth marks in them and, like, yeah, I don't have a weird fetish or stainless-steel anything going on down there."

She pulls over into the passing lane, where a car already is, and when that driver honks, she yells, "What are you honking at? You're the one that's an *******!"

Rousey says she doesn't care about not having a boyfriend. "If it's just about sex, I could get laid any old time. It's not about that. It's not like I have this fleeting window of time where I can have a sex life, whereas I do have this fleeting window of time where I can accomplish all these other things. If anything, it'll be better for my sex life if I get all this other **** done, because I'll be more durable afterward."

Back inside her place, she greets Mochi, then takes a request and goes to stand in front of a full-length mirror to display the face she puts on during every fight right before the referee claps his hands and bellows, "Let's get it on!" Her fight face. "I call it mean mugging," she says, dropping into it, almost shyly. "You're staring at your opponent through your eyebrows."

She backs away from the mirror and says people who think she's impassive at such moments have it wrong. "I'm not looking blankly," she says. "You have to have intent, because people can read what you're thinking, and so I'm thinking of all the things I'm gonna do. Like with Cat Zingano. She's a sweet girl, super-awesome chick. But every single time I looked at her, I thought, 'I'm gonna send her home unrecognizable to her own child.' My mind just goes there. To terrible things. But then when the fight's over, I go from the most dangerous woman on the planet to the most cuddly, happy thing ever. I fall in love with everybody, even the person I just beat. I love that person for giving me that moment. I'll never hate them for wanting the same thing I do. I love them for it. Because I need them in order to be able to do what I do for myself."

But then, of course, there's always the next fight and the next opponent to hate, and hate them she will, because that's how she wins, and she will do anything to win. "I love heights, love bugs, loved to dig up earthworms, like snakes and slimy things, jumping off things, fire," she says. "I'm fine with all of it, always thought I'd be great on Fear Factor, because I'd eat that goat **** just like that. It's the thought of failing. That is my one and only big fear."
From The Archives Issue 1236: June 4, 2015

RS long form journalism is still good.

[GeneChing]

She lived in it for a while.

UFC Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey's Honda Accord LX 2005
This is the car that Ronda lived in with her dog Mochi








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Want to own Ronda Rousey's 2005 Honda Accord LX? Here's your chance!
There are many of Ronda's personal belongings inside the car including medals, UFC programs from past events, patches, hats, and all kinds of random Ronda items. You can see from the eBay photos what all the items are that are located in the car. We (Ronda's family) like to joke about all of the cool things you find in Ronda's car. Every time you open the door, it's is like an archeological dig! Also, Ronda did glue a few medals, patches, coins, and figurines to the inside of her car which probably aren't going to come off.

Below you can also view two YouTube videos of Ronda dancing, singing, and having fun in her 2005 Honda Accord.

This car has 156,098 miles on it as of 5/31/15. Ronda's mom might drive it to the grocery store or to the 7 Generation Games office once or twice before the car is sold, so the car might have about 10 additional miles on it before the new owner picks the car up.

The car runs fine, but does need a new transmission. The new owner will need to pick the car up in Los Angeles, or make their own shipping arrangement.





On May-31-15 at 22:12:46 PDT, seller added the following information:

We received a few questions from potential buyers asking if Ronda will be present at the time of pick-up. Please note that Ronda will not be available at the time of pickup for of the vehicle.

[David Jamieson]

I think it will be pretty cool when other women can get to the level of determination of Ronda.
That will be game changing when people of all stripes are going out to pay and see a girl fight for real.