AFTER ROUSEY LOST, many people began to revel in the idea that the woman who could kick everyone's ass in under a minute had gotten her comeuppance. Donald Trump tweeted that she was "not a nice person." 50 Cent posted a picture of her unconscious, then tried to blame it on his friend Floyd Mayweather before deleting it. Justin Bieber reposted one of the thousands of memes making fun of Rousey that went viral after the fight, then also deleted it. Lady Gaga-she of the raw meat dress and matching hat-posted a photo of Holm punching Rousey on Instagram and captioned it, "THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR NOT TOUCHING GLOVES!"
("It was just like a reaction," Rousey says about her decision not to touch gloves with Holm before the fight. "I was like, 'The last time I saw you [at the weigh-in], you were putting your fist on my chin and trying to get a cheap hit on me, then you turn around and you want to touch gloves? You have to be one way or the other. So if you want to be that way with me, that's the way it is.'")
Fellow MMA fighter Cat Zingano was at Kalapaki Joe's bar on the Hawaiian island of Kauai when Rousey got knocked out. She should've been happy; Rousey beat her in 14 seconds when they fought in February. But then everyone started yelling "In your face!" and laughing as Rousey bled on the mat. "When I saw what people were saying to her, I was so disappointed in the fans and the sport. I immediately got protective of her," Zingano says. "It was pitiful how people were treating her. And I love all these armchair quarterbacks on etiquette. She didn't touch gloves? I've never touched gloves. I might give them some knuckles or whatever. But we're getting in a fistfight inside some fenced-in walls. You want there to be etiquette?"
Take nothing away from Holm. She dominated the fight. But Holm is the first to tell you none of the spoils of victory she's basking in now would be possible without Rousey.
"I have a lot of respect for her," Holm said after the fight. "I wouldn't be here and had this opportunity if it wasn't for what she has done. There are a lot of female fighters before her who paved the way, and all of that has built up to this. But she was definitely the biggest to really make a splash."
This isn't really new. The fight game has long been a stage for athletes who became symbols of social change and objects of derision. William Nack wrote of Muhammad Ali after his loss to Joe Frazier in 1971, "For many viewers, Ali was still the mouth that poured, the renegade traitor and rabble-rouser whose uppity black ass needed dusting. For many others, of course, he symbolized all successful men of color who did not conform in a white man's world-and the hope that one, at least one, would overcome."
History has been kind to Ali because he helped usher in the societal changes that needed to happen. He also beat Frazier the next two times they fought.
How Rousey will be remembered largely depends on what she does next.
"I guess it's all going to be determined by what happens in the rematch," she says. "Everything is going to be determined by that. Either I'll win and keep going or I won't and I'll be done with everything."
SERENA WILLIAMS WAITED until the Friday after Thanksgiving to text. She sent Rousey her love and support and, most important, her understanding.
They'd met for sushi one night in Los Angeles this fall, about a month after Williams lost her own shot at perfection and a grand slam-she was upset by Roberta Vinci at the U.S. Open, sending her into her own deep mourning period. A few weeks later, she issued a statement saying she was sitting out the rest of the season to heal from injuries, including the one to her heart. But out with Rousey, she was closer to her true self, and Rousey had found a kindred spirit.
"I ****ing love her," Rousey says. "Everybody else is like, 'Oh, I'm small and proper and tennis-y' and she's just like, ****in' muscles, curvaceousness, awesomeness. She doesn't back down from anyone."
I was always so sure that I could will my body to do anything that I wanted it to do. I wouldn't listen to it.”
- Ronda Rousey
It's easy, too easy maybe, to make the parallel between these two dominant athletes, each a win away from immortality (until the next match/fight). But Williams isn't carrying tennis on her back the way Rousey carries the UFC. "I call it juggling on a unicycle," Rousey says. During camp she's training twice a day for the fight and driving all over town to promote it. The questions are always the same. The interviews always take longer than they're supposed to. Someone says they just need five minutes of her time, it turns into 20.
"I hate giving stock answers, it makes me nuts. I hate repeating myself," she said one fall afternoon while driving to Fox Studios to tape promos to be played during the next Sunday's NFL games. "That's a good thing bartending taught me."
It takes 10 minutes to name all the bars in LA where she either worked or tried to work. It was 2008, after the Olympics. Rousey had no career, no home and no prospects. All she wanted to do was everything she'd missed out on by dedicating her life to judo. There was The Redwood in Downtown, Gladstones in Malibu, The Cork in Crenshaw. She'd see a post on Craigslist and apply. In between, she'd squeeze in shifts at an animal rehabilitation center and 24 Hour Fitness and give judo lessons for $50 an hour. She'd go into the bathroom at The Cork and take five-minute naps on the toilet. At one point she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed her car on the 405. There's still a small scar on her nose.
"I was always so sure that I could will my body to do anything that I wanted it to do," she said, making her way through LA traffic. "I wouldn't listen to it."
Twenty minutes ago, she was annoyed at her sparring partner for running behind and throwing off her schedule. She's going to be late for the Fox interview, which will make her late for the next interview, which might cut into any potential rest time before jiujitsu practice at the Gracie Academy in Torrance at night.
But she used to live in this part of town. She knows a shortcut.
"This used to be my exit!" she yells. "You get off on Motor, take a left and then a right and right. There's my pizza place. I love that pizza place!"
She laughs as she cuts across three lanes of traffic to get off the 10.
Beating the traffic and then outsmarting the traffic app turns her whole mood around.
"Now you know how to go if you're ever stuck in traffic in this part of town," she says proudly.
Rousey technically has .33 victories per bout minute, ranking her as UFC's most dangerous fighter across all divisions. Nick Laham
JUSTIN FLORES TRIED to sit still in the plastic white chairs of the hospital emergency room. But it turned out an emergency room in Melbourne is just as awful as the ones back in the States. All you do is wait and pace, hoping for good news from the doctors, who come too rarely and never say enough.
Flores has been coaching Rousey in judo since both were teenagers. She'd take Amtrak from Los Angeles to train with him at his father's dojo in north San Diego County. She'd come by herself and stay a few weeks. He was seven years older than Rousey, but she trained "like any other guy," Flores said. "We went hard. All of the time. It was like the never-ending round. The round would be over and she was like, 'Let's go again.'"
He's seen her lose before. He knows what it looks like afterward. How much she hates it. How much it hurts her. After she lost in the 2005 World Championships in Egypt, he found 40 candy wrappers on the floor. There's always a binge and a purge. There's grief. Then there's anger.
"In the heat of that moment, she'd keep fighting and fighting until there's blood and it was serious," he said. "I would have to slow things down and tell her, 'You're great, everything's OK.'"
It's hard to wait for that part, even though he knows it's coming. So he paced the waiting room, replaying the fight over and over in his mind, trying to figure out how she lost so he could at least tell her something once she was out of the hospital.
"There was so much pressure to, like, outdo the last performance, it's like, how can you even do that? It's kind of like, 'Just win!' You can't worry about doing the impossible all the time. Every time she does, it's like this new impossible thing, rather than being smart and tactical and picking your moments, react right, use your timing and your skill set."
They had talked about doing different takedowns on Holm because she was taller than most of her previous opponents. Rousey would need leverage to bring her down. She'd have to set her feet differently and attack the legs and torso, not come over her shoulder.
When they finally got to speak for a few minutes at the hospital, she mentioned that she didn't feel her legs were ever under her. She tried to stomp down on the mat as she entered the Octagon and just didn't feel strong. She was just off center, off kilter, off balance. Then she got hit in the face 30 seconds into the fight and never recovered.
"Her fighting is like a microcosm of her life. She is able to adapt and improvise and come out on top," Flores said. "She's better on the fly rather than trying to do A, B, C, D, E, F, to Z and win. She's always been able to do it right then and there. In life, she's doing that too. She is real and truthful and she does it in a way where she always ends up on top."
He's home in California now but still pacing the waiting room.
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