Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojNTQRW-SXM
people don't know about this I had to keep it a [Music] secret uh it's really really difficult Ronda Ronda you have voted the best female athlete of all time what was it that made you the person that sits in front of me today so when I was a kid it was tough my dad he ended up taking his life when I was eight and in school I got picked on a lot I actually dropped out when I was 16 and moved away from home to train full-time but a lot of the coaches thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best results my first coach just located my job people don't know about this but I get concussions all the time and every time you get a concussion it's easier to get another one so by the time I got into MMA I had to be able to finish the person off immediately it was those experiences that made me the world champion and you stacked up a bunch of records including the fastest ever win fastest submission fastest title defense but then that loss to hly just like that yeah my whole world turned upside down I had to disappear for a while and um you decided to move on to the WWE you don't have nice things to say about it Vin man just created a fundamentally sick environment and I think he still is running the company to this day why before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69% my goal is 50% so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this [Music] episode wonda when I interview people I often ask them to tell me the most sort of pertinent first event in their story that went on to shape who they are and with you from reading through your story it's quite clear that the first potentially significant event happened as you were being born yeah I uh I was born with the UL cord around my neck and uh I was like a
zero on the epar scale which is like the health of a baby when they're born I was blue like thought I was dead um had to it took a while to revive me and um I had uh some damage from that um some neurological damage which expressed itself as a motor speech disorder called proxia which is basically I would have words formed in my head and try to say say it but there was kind of Disconnect between my brain and my mouth and it would come out differently than how I said it so um ended up having to do many years of speech therapy to be able to get over it and sometimes I uh I struggle a little bit but uh um I've I've you know dealt with it well enough where people don't notice but uh you know doing things like pro wrestling promos and stuff where everybody like will uh scrutinize you for like saying a single syllable or you know not producing every single not pronouncing every single word per perfectly like if I just stuttered like I did just now or mispronounced something like I did just now in a wrestling promo I would be like hung over it and so um you know there's little things like that that still Express themselves to this day but mostly it's not noticeable now the umbilical cord was wrapped around your neck the doctors gave you a zero out of 10 in terms of your health when you were a baby what age did you learn to speak properly um I didn't really speak like in full intelligible sentences until I was like around 5 or so when they did brain scans did they notice anything different in your brain at that point because of your because of the umbilical cord incident no no one ever like did a brain scan or anything like that I got tested for deafness for a long time autism um aoia didn't exist as a diagnosis until after I'd kind of really gotten over it um it was actually like a a like a fan a mom and her daughter that uh brought me like a pamphlet and was like we've heard your story it's been so inspirational to us we think what you had is this thing called a proxia and um and I was like oh my God this actually fits everything that we experiened perfectly and uh we ended up having a walk for a proxy here I got to like meet a bunch of different kids and stuff that were dealing with similar things but yeah it's kind of like newer on uh on in the field people being aware of it but I
think that's what made me um delve into sport so much because um you know with Judo especially you like communicate physically with a person you have to put your hands on another person you have to talk and interact with that person and so when I was having a hard time uh when we moved back to LA like really socializing with other kids sports you know specifically Judo made it like kind of it was like a conduit for me to be able to like connect with other kids and have something to talk about what was home life like for you before the age of 10 I mean I thought everything was perfect and awesome uh my my dad passed when I was eight though and um I didn't know but he had broken his back in a suing accident when we'd first moved to North Dakota and um he had like a rare blood disorder where he couldn't heal from it and so um he had been receiving uh diagnoses basically saying he'd become like a paraplegic in the then a quadriplegic could eventually die and um we didn't know that he was going through this or dealing with chronic pain or anything like that so he ended up taking his life when he was when when I was eight but he'd been going through that for years but had kept it from us and so then like my kind of my whole world turned upside down and then my mom ended up re remarrying a couple years later and then when I was around 10 11 is when we moved to um right in the border of San mon Venice your father had a sledding accident he he's told that he's going to be a quadriplegic soon yes at some point he broke his back and um his disease called bardar syndrome makes it difficult to clot your blood it's like a platelet you know your platelets are Mal malformed and uh so he wasn't able to heal basically and uh they put a rod in his back to try and help it heal but his spine was just crumbling away so his spine was basically like falling apart he died by Suicide yeah he uh he said he didn't want his our last memories of him to be a laying in a bed with tubes running in and out of him he was in a lot of pain all the time but didn't like being you know doped up on painkiller so he just wanted to go out his own way did you have any idea that he was suffering at that time none at all completely kept it from us so so one minute he's there and and then the next minute he's not
yeah how did you find out that he had died by Suicide um my mom told me right you know right after it happened how how how does a mother explain that to an 8-year-old child I mean she's a PhD in educational psychology so very you know technically I guess you know she just kind of laid laid the facts out of this is what happened and this is what's going on and we wanted to keep it from you cuz uh she said that my dad just wanted us to be kids and not have to worry about it she told you the details of his his suicide yeah what impact does that have on you um I mean in the long run I felt like it just kind of gave me this feeling that even if I feel like everything is okay that everything can come crashing down at any moment and uh I guess I like lost any feeling of security of even when everything's going great I feel like like the ball's about to drop you know and um that's something that I had to like you know work through till this day and I feel like mostly I'm I can feel pretty secure with my life and where I'm at but yeah it plagued me for a long time you were close to him yeah I was Big Time Daddy's girl yeah but part of the speech therapy was that my sisters were talking for me and so uh he had to work uh a little bit of a drive from the house so he would be um in Devil's Lake during the week and we'd come home to my not on the weekends and so um the speech therapist said I just spend one-on-one time with a parent so that I'm forced to speak so my sisters can't translate my gibberish for me and so we would it'd be me and him during the week and we'd come home on the weekend so he was like you know my whole world it's um it's almost done imaginable for an 8-year-old to try and process that in reality and like the because I think at 8 years old you don't understand the concept of suicide or why you know why a human could die by Suicide and at that age what is the story you you tell yourself in the book you talk you talk about how you would tell yourself that he's going he's just gone away on business and that he's going to return at some point yeah well that's the only time that he would really be gone away from the house for extended periods of times cuz he had
like a business trip or something and so that was just kind of like what I told myself to cope for for a while but then I found out later that uh my grandfather committed suicide as well so he was a second generation suicide your siblings and your mother the impact of the loss on your dad on them was that noticeable did you notice a change in them my my like sister didn't ever really want to talk talk about it and I I think you know my uh yeah no one really wanted to talk about it at all it wasn't like the kind of thing that we would bring up all the time your mother at this time she's um a champion in her own right yeah in everything she um got a perfect score on the SATs at 16 graduated college at 19 um then she won the World Championships in Judo the first American to ever win the World Championships in Judo while she was working as a single mother engineer and getting her PhD in educational psychology wow yeah she's incredible she when I was reading about her and doing some research on her she sounds like a little bit of a superwoman so I went and found um I wanted to see her and I found this picture of her y That's mom she looks like a badass bad she was the original armar lady she uh actually tore her knees out when she was 17 and had to learn how to win basically just on the ground so um she was the one that would always win by armar oh really yeah and she was kind of like taught me how she did it and you know I add added to and learned things as well but it's become like kind of a family heirloom as the armar yeah the family armar I I often think that um our childhoods and those sort of early formative experiences and the traumas that we experience they leave fingerprints on us in various ways that follow us for the rest of our lives um for good for bad bad and sometimes for ugly when you think about those sort of first 10 years of your life and the fingerprints it left on you as an adult and the person that sits in front of me today what are those things that are um most sort of ingrained in you from that time of your life what's most ingrained in me from being a kid um well I think like you know like losing a parent is a huge format of
event have you ever read a blink by Malcolm Gladwell no but I've spoken to him on the podcast but no I haven't yeah he mentions that uh that kids that lose a parent before they're 10 actually end up being uh more successful statistically later in life and uh it's like well he he's the one that delved into into his book but um you know when I was reading I'm like oh you know I I could see I could see that that makes sense in a way and um the the aoia and stuff like really pushing me towards Sports and like being physical and and things like that and being the youngest of the sisters so you know I was the one that was that getting beat on at the house so it made me tougher and want to constantly be able to like prove myself as you know not just being a little baby but deserving of respect and stuff like that and those kind of like made me into um the kind of kid that would when I first started swimming I wanted to win the Olympics and swimming when I first started Judo I was like I just still want to win the Olympics in this now and um but that was just how encouraging my parents were you know if they're like oh you want to swim you're going to you can win the Olympics and swimming you know and so I was just always fed that expectation that I could do everything and at sort of 10 years old you moved to Santa Monica um and you had your first attempt and try at Judo is that right yeah I um well I was swimming here but I wasn't so much into swimming it's kind of boring and uh I didn't like waking up in the morning and jumping in a cold pool I didn't blame me yeah so after a little bit of that I was like h I want to do something else and my mom uh she trained here in the 80s back when she did Judo and so she went to go visit a bunch of her old teammates that had all gone and opened up clubs of their own and I went and tried it and I remember my first day I didn't even have a hair tie my hair was all over the place crazy and I was like trying to figure out how to do Judo and uh I had the most fun that I ever had cuz I love that there was no one way to do it if it you know if it worked it was right and it was kind of like mentally intriguing you have to figure it out you're like solving a puzzle or like having a conversation with the other person you
know and so um because it was so like mentally engaging I think that's why I liked it so much and uh uh when I won my first tournament I got that feeling of winning that I didn't quite get in in swimming I was one of the top kids in the state but I wouldn't like really win swimming meets and so um first time I won something I got like addicted to that feeling I guess so I actually dropped out of school when I was 16 to be able to train and do Judo full-time and move away from home to train full-time what was your mother's opinion on you doing Judo seeing as she was a a champion in Judo herself when her daughter turns around and says mom I want to do Judo too um I mean I can't really say how she felt but I mean I was kind of like identified as being like a prodigy of Judo pretty young and uh she wanted to kind of take an outside role of making sure that I was training with all the right people at the right time she wasn't the person that was on like she of course taught me everything that that she could and um but she didn't really want to be that overbearing coach Mom on the match you more of like was like you go here train with this person you go here train with that person was like the overarching like architect of my career and everything like that you um you went to your first tournament and you win the tournament with instant wins ions I don't know what an ion is but ion is like if you throw someone flat on their back okay right so you win that first tournament people start considering you to be this child prodigy in Judo what was it about when you look back on yourself now with all the wisdom you have what was it about you that made you Excel above your peers Judo what was it about your character something that you did uh I mean there had to be some sort of genetic Factor cuz like my mom and my dad are both like good athletes um but I think yeah part of it was personality wise but I just really wanted to win I had that I cared why I mean winning felt good but I also it really hurt for me to lose I hated like my first tournament I lost I like locked myself in a room for like a week I was so upset but I was willing to get my heart broken I was willing to care about something so much that my heart would be broken if I
didn't you know achieve it and I don't know I think I felt like the idea of being better at something than everybody else like made me special somehow it was like proof and it was also it wasn't like I was dragging myself through doing it to be great at something because that's what it was I I really enjoyed like mastering the art of Judo like figuring it out it was like endlessly intriguing to me at the time and I remember when I was 16 I like realized while I was you know doing nawaza which is fighting on the ground that the end of one move was the beginning have another one and that's when I moov from like trying to memorize all these separate techniques to trying to um combine them into like a path and like a web and I um I didn't come up and you know naaza and Judo is not the focus of the sport really um maybe it's like 20% of the time people spend on the ground maybe less but it wasn't like Gracie Jiu-Jitsu where they like show you like oh this is the way and this is the structure and I was very open-ended and so I was kind of like I had to create like my own like system basically my own fighting style and everything like that and that was I think the most interesting to me that I was like creating a philosophy and everything and Concepts and how how did I piece everything together and so um I think that was the most interesting part I I could train for hours and hours and hours and hours and not realize that I'm tired because I'm trying to piece something together um but I also I think we call it like opposite add where I like fixate on things for like hours on end and I can't get off of it and uh but if you tell me to like run you know I'm like oh my God the whole time I'm like okay I'm tired I'm tired I'm more tired than I was but if you tell me like if I had to try and figure out how to like do a certain punch a certain right way or do a certain throw a certain right way I would do it for hours on end trying to get it absolutely perfect and not realize all that time had passed so and sometimes that's like a negative thing or I'll fix dat on something like something stupid I did like several years ago and not be able to stop myself from thinking about it but it's also the same thing that would keep me training on a single technique for hours on end
just trying to get it right and my mom said when I was a kid I would draw the same picture over and over and over again I would I remember it was like a bunny in the middle and there was like a bush a bush and a tree and a tree and each side and like a sun with the cool glasses right my mom would be like what why do you keep drawing this picture over and over thousands of times I would draw the same drawing and uh she said my answer was that I'm just trying to get it to match the picture in my head I couldn't understand why when I thought of a bunny and a bushes and all this stuff and I drew it it didn't look exactly like a bunny and so I would keep drawing it over and over and over again to try and get it and uh I guess that's like you know my personality I guess it's something that I can't really control for For Better or For Worse and is that perfectionism is that how You' kind of Define that this sort of obsessive um pursuit of making the thing perfect as you see it I don't think it's so much perfectionism as it is Mastery I want to like master and understand something completely it's kind of like an unfinished puzzle you know cuz I can live in squalor like I don't think like the perfectionism of everything around me is really uh um so so important but yeah being able to to understand something completely is something that nags me if I don't completely understand it I have to like keep going back to it big jimm you go and train with big Jim at 16 years old you leave home at 16 years old and go and train with big Jim who's Big Jim and why did you go and live with him what for eight months roughly oh God mean on and off for like years I was up there um uh well Big Jim was one of the best coaches in the country and he trained his son little Jimmy who had just won the 1999 World Championship as in Judo and um I know Judo is not that big in the US so the places that are good at it and have good coaches and good people to train with are few and far between and um Pedro's Judo was one of those places yeah leaving home at 16 is um is unusual to say the least yeah what impact did that have on you it was tough it was hard I remember being homesick a lot um I was really isolating you know I uh all I did was train all day there
wasn't any other kids my age I was always around people older than me um you know part of being like a sport Prodigy is no one your age is on your level you know so I was always training with people older I also at the same time felt like I was in the middle of my Montage to do something like amazing you know my um I thought I was going to shock the world and be the first American to win the gold medal in Judo at 17 and so no it was worth it to me and at this time you're 16 you're you have your first experience with what we call bulimia you talk about this in the book where because of the pressure for to make way almost every week you struggled with bulimia for the first time can you what do I need to understand about that because I I don't understand what bimar is in my in Full full entirety but I also don't understand the circumstances that would lead a 16-year-old to make decisions to that would be categorized as Bic um well basically I had to be await on a deadline very often and it's not really a weight that I could healthily stay at and so I would have to cut weight to get there and um I just it started to give me like a really unhealthy relationship with food where I would like hoard food while I was cutting weight like candy bars and stuff like that and then after I made weight I would like Gorge myself on it like I didn't know any I didn't have any um resources to help me out with it and so uh it just kind of spiraled into a disorder and that sort of would mean um throwing up your food after you to eaten it on occasion MH yep I remember the first time I did it was uh I had like a childhood coach or something took me out one day and he like basically like forced me to have a chocolate shake and he was like no you got to have a chocolate shake come on it's fine you train it all the time you need to relax you have a chocolate shake and I felt like so guilty about the chocolate shake that I and I had to be like make weight or something like that weekend or something I there's no way I would be able to make it and so like uh I made myself throw up the chocolate shake and it was actually like it was it was cold it didn't hurt it was that bad you know and I was like oh well it's
that wasn't even that terrible and so uh I thought it was like a one time thing but the next time I like ate two to much and I felt like really guilty about it it just became like you know the panic button of if I ate too much and I had a deadline coming up where I had to be a certain weight I felt like it was the only thing I could do and I was a little girl that was growing you know I like grew 4 in and like doubled my weight in a short period of time and so I just couldn't stay at a lower weight so um but you have all this outside pressure to be able to maintain the the same way even though as an athlete you're growing and putting on muscle and even getting taller so it was kind of like fighting nature I read in your book that they called you missman yeah in school it wasn't cool for you know little girls to be muscular back then and so uh before I dropped out at 16 you know I uh I was really muscular and um people would like grab at my arms and make fun of me all the time to the point that I would just kind of like I would wear a zipup hoodie all the time no matter how hot I was I always Tred to like cover up my arms or how muscular I was which is one reason why when I got older that trying to like fight that that uh idea that being muscular or was masculine was something that became important to me because that you know if you were a teenage girl in the early 2000s it was a a pretty unhealthy standard that was presented to us so yeah I uh I didn't fit the the very narrow scope of what was considered attractive at that that time and um and now it's like considered like really cool for you know women to have muscles now all the model models have like stomach definition and stuff like that and like are doing boxing and all this stuff and want to look toned but um that that wasn't the case back and that wasn't the case back then that was something that I got teased for a lot by 18 you leave home and you go off to um you leave home as you say because you felt like you wanted to have some control over your life um and I think you on route to the Olympics at this point you were thinking about going to the Olympics at 21 years old you actually competed in the Beijing Olympics and were the first American
women to get an Olympic medal and then what I found really shocking is that you made $6,000 from from winning that medal at the Olympics yeah after I got taxed on it $1,000 and got taxed on it actually bitched about it so much in the media when I was doing MMA that they got rid of that tax but still you would only get $110,000 is there like a bit of a through line in your story that starts very young about this idea of um the importance of validation and respect from other people this kind of bit of a chip on your shoulder that was driving you yeah I think it it started out of something that drove me and then it ended up being something that held me back that I had to kind of shake myself from but you know I also benefited greatly from it so I'm not saying I regret anything but I know that it wasn't like a sustainable model for for me to you know be happy in the long run CU I spoke to Tim Grover who trained LeBron and um Kobe and he said the same thing to me he said you know when he's talking about Kobe and all those years training him to To Be A Champion that our dark side and our light light side are interconnected when he's talking about our Dark Side he's basically saying like the trauma the the difficult things about us the things that we would probably keep in the shadow if we could um they end up creating the greatness that we see on our screens and it's like you can't separate out the two you can't just have this person and not this person unfortunately but like he he makes the case to me that we all have a dark side and unfortunately it's it as I say it's responsible for our light side I I see that throughout your story this sort of Journey to understanding that part of you and as you say in your book like liberating yourself from it um which is really interesting because I feel like I've been through this trying to been I've been trying to do the same thing in my life I've been trying to take back the control of some of it because as you said there it can lead you to the top of the mountain and then it can sometimes bring you down the other side or it can make you miserable at the top of the mountain I think I had to get to the top of several mountains to realize that like the mountain climbing wasn't really going to be what
made me happy and I had this idea that if I like if I collected or hoarded achievements that somehow well someday they would all add up to happiness that I would be able to like I did this thing so now I could be happy forever like my idea was if I'm like the first American to win the Olympic in Judo then I will be happy for the rest of my life and it's not it it it didn't really work like that like I could yeah achieve these great things and it would make me happy for a time but your life goes on past that and so I kind of had to um figure out after hoarding all these bucket list experiences that um that I would actually end up just forgetting at times like someone had to remind me the other day remember when you flew with the Thunderbirds I'm like oh yeah and and then and then they didn't equate to to the actual happiness and I had to um I thought that if I like could make my past into something that i' I'd done all these great things that it would it would dictate my future but I had to kind of figure out that like making myself happy with every day that I'm wi that that I'm living individually is what I needed to do and there's no amount of accomplishments that you can like add to you know your your trophy shelf that are going to acquaint to being happy forever in the future it just it just is impossible and it sounds like you you were living with a bit of a secret throughout your sort of early MMA career and the fact that you had what appeared to be a bit of a concussion based brain injury of sorts because in your book you talk about how you realize that in inspiring if someone hit you pretty hard in the head you'd end up seeing Stars yeah I mean I people didn't really know about CTE back when I was doing Judo and um I get concussions all the time and just be told that you know hey I my head hurts I have photo Vision I would say it like stuff like that and then' be like just stop being a [ __ ] and like keep training and so um I would get you know dozens and dozens of concussions and never be allowed to stop and I would have to keep training through them and the symptoms would persist for weeks so the point that I was experiencing concussion symptoms more often than I wasn't for 10year Judo
career I mean that's the kind of thing that like you know leads to CTE all these football players that we we're dealing with were having concussions repeatedly and not being allowed to rest and so by the time I got into MMA like this is the kind of injury that accumulates over time you don't you know it doesn't go away every time you get a concussion it's easier to get another one and so by the time I got into MMA I um it was really easy for me to to get concussion symptoms and um i' I'd rested for a couple years you know so at first it wasn't so bad but it it just got worse and worse and worse with time even if I'm winning a fight and you know 14 seconds and the other person doesn't touch me there's uh 50 rounds of sparring that went into that training camp and you're wearing like a headgear and gloves which are meant to protect you cosmetically but these gloves are 14 ounces and you're wearing this head gear so your brain is you know suspended in fluid the the larger the thing is like it's a 14 o ounces it's easier actually to give you a concussion um when you're sparring and it's the kind of thing that I just didn't want to like say anything about you know I didn't want and I didn't want to address it myself or any kind of weakness in myself and I just kept telling myself that I you know I just have to be perfect and not allow these people to touch me I have to create this fighting style that's so efficient that I don't take any damage and um it got to a point where I fought Sarah McMahon and she barely tapped me and I obviously had a concussion afterward I couldn't bear to look at the lights I had to have everyone turn the lights off and um I was looking for a way out you know cuz I know I couldn't sustain that forever um but yeah it's got to it got to the point where if I got like tapped at all um with the you know said the point say Stephanie McMahon slapped me and gave me a concussion you know and uh the you know a woman then that has never been a fighter in her life and even you know is uh passed her slapping Prime if she can slap me across the face and give me a concussion you know I shouldn't be fighting anymore did you keep this a secret I had to keep it a secret from everybody um my coaches
Dana even like myself I just didn't want to face face up to it I just thought thought that I could keep it going forever and so that like I think was the most frustrating thing to me that like in my uh my first loss I got tapped in the beginning and I'd fallen down the stairs a week or so like maybe a week or so before that knocked myself out falling down the stairs at my house and then didn't say anything went into the fight anyway had a horrible weight cut had the wrong mouth guard with that which didn't have the protection on the back of the bottom teeth so the first time she Taps me my teeth get knocked loose and I'm out on my feet like when I say out on my feet it means that like like I have no I have no depth depth perception basically and I'm at a very limited capacity of what my brain can um the information that it could give me and so I knew that if she knew that I was hurt I wouldn't be able to defend myself and so I had to keep coming forward without knowing how far away she was and not being fully you know hold of my facilities just to keep them the fight going hoping that I would recover but I just couldn't and so I think that that's one of the things that really dug like dug at me for so long that so many people were like saying like oh Rhonda's game plan was bad or whatever this and like they didn't know that like I wasn't like present I I was like just trying to survive I couldn't see how far away she was I um it wasn't like that was my game plan or anything like that I was like completely disabled and uh when I tried to fight again and I was like okay I give myself a break and I'll make sure the mouth goge is perfect and this time I'm not going to knock myself out right before the fight and all those things and the same thing I just got tapped and I was I was out you know even if I was out on my feet I was out so I just like just didn't have the hardware to continue fighting and a lot of people would say like oh you're a [ __ ] quitter you're this this or that and and it's really difficult because i' never had been more skilled as a fighter I'd never been better in my life but I just you know I just neurologically
wasn't capable of continuing it to fight at that level and I couldn't say anything about it then because I wanted to go and do pro wrestling and they already have their own controversy that they had to deal with with uh wrestlers having you know CTE all kinds of damage from concussions and so it's such a volatile subject that I just I couldn't say anything about it and I couldn't say anything about it leading into my my my last fight because then I'd be basically telling the other person that um you know the putting a Target on my head literally so I just had to stay silent about it for years and let people make their their own assumptions about me and um you know it was it was tough because like in some ways like I've never been better as a fighter I've never had a better grasp of everything than I ever had I'd never been faster stronger everything else but you know you only have so many hits that you can take and unfortunately I took the vast majority of them as a kid doing Judo I want to make sure I completely understand the context of the what it's like to get a concussion and to live with a concussion that ends up compounding to make it even more sensitive you you you take those big hits when you're younger they they ask you to fight through the concussion by the time you're in the UFC you've developed this incredible style where you basically get people out of there instantly I mean in the leading up to your fight with Amanda Holmes I think I remember the commentator saying at the time that you'd knocked or you'd submitted everyone within sort of 30 seconds of the fight starting so your your style had kind of adapted to become I'm going to get this person out of there immediately that yeah that wasn't an accident that was the goal that was the goal the goal was I had to be able to finish the person off immediately because that was the only way that I could fight is to not take any damage because if they had hit you in the head at that point there was a risk that you you would get a concussion and you were aware of that risk but your coaches weren't no were any of your coaches aware of it no was Edmund aware of it yourbody I didn't tell anybody I didn't it was one of those things I just didn't
want to like face up to that to having any weakness in myself and also like like Edan would have made me stop I didn't want to stop I didn't want anyone to be making that decision for me I didn't wanted to tell the company that I was having neurological symptoms cuz then they wouldn't let me continue to fight I didn't want those decisions to be taken out of my hands in your book you talk about the relationship you had with Edmund and it wasn't always great in terms of his approach to coaching you talk about how he would physically strike you during training but more potentially even more he would emotionally abuse you during training I mean honestly I can't think of single coach that I had like a great like a like a great relationship with like this is like a lot of the coaches were of that like Bella Cori kind of generation of like they thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best result and that was kind of what was like in Vogue at the time so um and like that as an athlete you're just kind of like all right well this is what I have to deal with in order to be the best and especially with like these these Sports where you have no other choice like this is the national team coach and you have to get their approval and put up their [ __ ] to be able to to fight at this level and so like Edmund was I think not as bad as previous coaches so that's why I um put up with a lot cuz I felt like I at least had a say that I could I could talk back the other coaches would just you know um like little Jimmy my first coach literally like dislocated my jaw as I was a little kid I threw him once in front of everybody and and laughed because I thought it was awesome and he threw me on the benches on top of the table at everybody else's in front of all these people and uh you know Big Jim had like grabbed me by the throat before to like drive his point home that women can't defend themselves and so this is like behavior that I've been conditioned to tolerate since I was like a little girl and um Edmund was of that same like Eastern European kind of like school of thought of like you have to be like
really tough and in order to bring the best out of people and um what does that do to your emotions though because we develop you know at the age when most of us are developing our emotions you're having yours suppressed and you're being made into this really quote unquote tough person I think it kind of taught me from a young age to just like how to diffuse like coaches that were like getting out of hand and to not because if I st stood up for myself it would just make it worse and so it just kind of like taught me to like okay I got to like get this person in a good mood all the time or I had to like butter them up or I have to like strategically find my way to like out out of being bered or something like that and so um I think it's not so much one individual that's a huge problem I think like the whole system is the problem and that it really reinforces these like in these power IM balances that are um inevitably taken advantage of that all these coaches have free reign of their little their little foms and um a lot of these athletes don't have any other option and so like I don't see how like in school you can have like a teacher someone comes in to watch the teacher teach to grade them on their teaching like nobody does this for coaching and you know so I would hear these stories about like these Sumo coaches that like would kill their Athletes Training them and I'd be like yeah you know I could see how that going happen and it's just it's it's not one person it's not one sport it's everywhere and there's like I can't say that I have all the answers for it but I can say that like coaching in general creates a really like unhealthy power like in inbalance that what I was able how I was able to take my relationship with my coach Edmund and take it from off the rails back on track is to to have very distinct boundaries you know a lot of times your coach is someone that you're you know is tough on you but they're also like they care about you they're a parent they're a brother they're they're a coach too but a lot of times it it becomes like an overbearing family member and a coach and you can't be both that's why my mom
didn't want to be my coach she didn't want to have to be my mom and my coach because being both of those at the same time is inevitably unhealthy and when we put boundaries in place of like okay this is what your job is and you do not do anything outside of that then you know I training was better than ever our relationship was better than ever but I think like a lot of these lines and these boundaries get blurred and they need to be very you know very defined in order for for it to work out and how were those Lines Blurred with your coach um just just he was crossing them in terms of the things he was able to say and do yeah I mean a lot of it was like he just wanted to know where I was all the time and um like I needed to be constantly available and and stuff like that and uh or else it would like end up turning into like a big argument or something like that and I would just end up just trying to like do anything I could to not get in an argument and um but yeah like I had to like make a rule at one point I was like you're not allowed to FaceTime me cuz I don't want you to just FaceTime me and know where I am at all times and what I'm doing cuz like it's my [ __ ] business it's my privacy and it was just he was always trying to push that boundary um now was always pushing back and stuff like that and um but I was like I don't know I A lot of times I like I'm like I just want to train like I don't I would be just trying to like plate him because if I like just stopped talking to him and an argument then it would end up leaking into training the next day and so it just became like really like taxing of like my my energy in general but like I mean I can't really think of a single like coach relationship that I that I had that was like perfect but it worked you know that's the one problem that I'd always had like debating I'm like well it's working I'm getting better and so you would just put up with it because there's there was no perfect option out there you said at the very start that you were very very close to your father and then when your father the past these other men that almost take on what someone could like into a fatherly role are all
coaches yeah yeah no I mean they were all like uh what was it in in Kill Bill that was talking about uh that bill lost his father early so he collected father figures yeah I collected them um none of them were as good as the original but yeah I think that that constant need for you know um validation from a father fig it was something that I was constantly like pursuing but um you know that like that philosophy of coaching of you know you see like the like the Russian figure skaters the gymnast that never smile because they've been like beaten into iron that was basically the philosophy of all the coaches that I had they would see someone like B coroli and be like oh my God like he was their Idol and so they're all trying to like emulate that beating the emotion out of you this is something that I that I've always wondered about you because you you've always had a Steely um exterior you know no you have especially when in the in the fight in the UFC days I watched some of you your Clips to remind myself of your fighting days before this and you know that you came in with that face that that face and um just in interviews around that time and so on and this is why I asked the question about emotion and how as because you got into this at such a young age and you're dealing with these men who call you you know you're lack lacking discipline if you miss weight and all of these kinds of things um you go through that the loss of your father the unprocessed grief I'm wondering what happens to Ronda Rousey's relationship with her own emotions I mean I was always really emotional actually as a fighter I would cry on the mat all the time all the time I I cried on the mat like every practice for years straight and I would get yelled at for crying you get yelled at for crying I yelled at for crying so I would cry and then I would cry because I was crying and I would cry because I was being yelled at for crying and um yeah I just uh but it wouldn't be because something hurt it would because you know something I was frustrated by something I couldn't I got thrown or I couldn't make something work I was trying to make work and I would cry out of frustration and my uh mom said I had a tournament where
it was full double elimination so I ended up winning the tournament but I lost a match earlier in the day and every single match I would come out crying bow in throw the other girl on her ass beat her bow out crying come into the next match still crying beat the [ __ ] out of the other girl B out crying the whole day crying until I beat everybody beat the same girl that beat me twice in order to win on top of the podium number one crying still because I lost that first match earlier in the day and so yeah I was always very emotional I was extremely emotional as a fighter and in training and everything like that and that was something I was constantly trying to like battle was like if you get thrown in a tournament don't start crying because that was just something that would happen to me all the time very yeah and that it's so funny people think that I'm like yeah this emotionalist robot whatever I fight it took a long time to to be able to get there to stop like crying in the middle of a match wow yeah Dana says he's never going to allow women into the UFC to fight but then Dana changes his mind and he changes his mind because of you effectively so in September 2012 I remember the I remember it very fondly I remember where I was when I watched the first um woman fight in the UFC Dana says that he's signing the first ever woman fighter in the UFC lady called Ronda Rousey and despite saying a year earlier that he wouldn't but he called you a game changer and so you did end up changing the game and you became UFC champion between 2022 and 2015 you won 15 fights back to back most of them finished within seconds you stacked up a bunch of records including the fastest ever win fastest submission fastest title defense turnaround and you were voted the best female athlete of all time in a 2015 PN fan pole and Fox Sports called you one of the defining athletes of the 21st century part of that sort of 15 fights back to back was you know when I think about that period is the amount of times you were fighting was really unusual you're fighting I think there sometimes you're fighting three times in nine months which is kind of unheard of for anyone in the UFC I mean there's Fighters today that seem to just fight once a year why were you doing that why
were you fighting so frequently I was fighting that frequently because that's how often Dana called and I told him that you no if you sign me I will be there to fight whenever you need me and I never said no and so anytime that I got an offer or anytime one of the guys got hurt or fell out I was always the one that would fill in and um you know if there was like a I always fought on like uh Fe like februaries and augusts and November like the worst times of the years is to fight because that's when they needed somebody to come in and pick up the numbers so I wasn't somebody like like holding out to only fight on the fourth of July card or New Year's card which are the best you know viewer um the highest view of the year I um I would do whatever was best for the company because that's what I promised the role that I would fulfill that was like the deal that I made when I came in and um you know nobody else has to do that but I felt like I I owed it to Dana I I I promised him I would be there anytime that he needed me and I was if you could go back and give yourself advice on that day when you signed your UFC contract now you could time travel back to that Ronda and give her a little bit of advice whisper in a what would you say I wouldn't change anything you wouldn't change anything time travel is not possible and I led myself to where I am now and I'm happy with where I'm at so I wouldn't [ __ ] with it when you got the news that you're going to be signing for the UFC as the first ever woman to fight in the UFC how did how did that feel um validating really yeah and I was just really excited I just felt like I was in on a secret that the whole world didn't know and they were just starting to find out and throughout that period while you were the UFC champion you take up acting and you you feature in a couple of films like the Fast and Furious The Expendables Etc was that something that you always had planned or is that something that just arose as an opportunity uh the movie stuff just kind of arose as an opportunity um but you know once it became a possibility I was like of course I could be the next Bruce Lee you know of course I could do great at this and um uh I felt like I was good like performer and you know great physical performer as well and I could
combine the two in a way that nobody else could so I went after it with the same kind of confidence I went after everything on the 14th of November 2015 you had UFC 193 where you were lined up to fight Holly Holmes in Melbourne Australia I remember where I was when that fight happened I I didn't miss many UFC fights and I still don't miss many but it was a really sort of um a huge turning point for a number of reasons you were indestructible basically that's how the whole UFC community and I think the fan base saw you but in that moment as you said earlier on there was an initial contact and I watched the clip again earlier on there's an initial contact I think it was with um Holly holm's elbow if if I can't remember if I remember correctly and then you talked about having this sort of issue with dep death percept depth perception because of that initial contact and that's actually what I see in that clip I see from that first sort of strike that there is an issue with kind of understanding where where um Holly is and that fight ends in a head kick from that moment when you leave the O the Octagon how does how does your life and perception of everything change because it's interesting the way that you were built up to that you were I was going to say the top of the mountain and you up in the clouds at that point like it was it was framed to everyone that you were fundamentally indestructible you know and that's kind of what the marketing machine does it does to everyone they're fundamentally indestructible but to everyone with from mamad Ali to my friend Israel um in the UFC everyone has their day where we find out that everyone is a human being to some degree from the moment you leave the UFC what is life like from that point onwards when you get back into the medical room um extremely depressing you know that was my whole identity was uh uh being champion and defeated and um it's just like Soul crushing really was it was I was just kind of like forced to face music before I was ready to and I knew that um it was going to catch up to me at some point but I was more think upset that there were so many people out there that were like reveling
in it and um and I don't know it just felt so like unjust in a way because I just felt like it was just there's so much of it it just wasn't my fault you know I just couldn't like my brain just couldn't take what I asked of it anymore and my body took as much as it could until it literally broke and I gave everybody everything that I had and um and that wasn't enough for them they they hated me for not having more so I mean it was tough it was um I saw a whole bunch of people that I thought were friends just you know turn on me and um it was uh really eye opening in a way though you know to who TR who had CH who to who true friends are and what is what true happiness is and that outward validation wasn't it and so I think maybe he might have saved me in a way from going down the path of trying to like chase that high of everybody's you know approval forever but um so I guess it was liberating in a way in the long run if I was a fly on the wall that night when you left that octagon what would I have seen a lot of crying you know um I had to get my lip sewed up the muscle underneath and then the the skin I remember I was so out of it that I like bit off a chunk of my lip and spit it out like it was like a piece of chap like you know like a chapped lip like that's how out of it I was I was biting and Che like spinning out chunks of like fles in my lip and people judging me for the decisions I was making while while in that state I think is what bothered me the most it wasn't so much that I lost it was just that people thought that I didn't know how to fight and um you know if I was at my full capacity I don't think anyone could ever beat me but I just you know I was spent I I was running on fumes for so long that I didn't have any fumes left and um and the moment that I ran out of fumes was um you know broadcast live to billions of people everywhere who all had their own assumptions about it and
none of them are right and I felt like I couldn't speak up or say anything and on honestly like whoever I tried to talk to they didn't care about um helping me communicate what I was trying to communicate they just cared about getting as many clicks as possible so I couldn't trust anyone to speak through so I feel like this book was the only way that I could really communicate everything that I'd been holding on to for years because I mean yeah it was really tough but I literally fought until I couldn't fight anymore and maybe that's not enough for a lot of people but I feel like I created the most efficient fighting style that ever created that that was that's ever existed and um I had to realize that only people that are truly great can recognize greatness I wanted to be so great that only that even an idiot couldn't um deny it but um but then I realized after going into pro wrestling that retiring undefeated and taking the equity that I had with me wouldn't have been what was best for the sport even though I know that I'm better than all these girls and by [ __ ] long shot and I always will be taking my Equity away from me so that everybody is knows that wouldn't would actually tarnish my legacy it wouldn't make everybody take the the women after me seriously and so it it had to happen for the for you know the the betterment of the sport but you know sometimes it it still stings a little bit that it's you know I'm not recognized as the greatest ever what I know I am but my mom said all the time really quick you have this picture here that she didn't care if everybody knew she was the best in the world she only cared if she knew she didn't care if that nobody knew who was the first American world champion of Judo back in 1984 it was important to her and um I think like somewhere along the way um I it started to matter more what other people thought than what I thought and so um I think being being forced back to to that was actually the best thing that could have happened to me I don't think people realize the extent of they see it as kind of just a game you fighting they see it's some kind of game that they're watching like they're playing on Xbox or Playstation but I don't think they
understand the extent of the devastation on a human level that you kind of experience after that loss and I think until you did that interview with Ellen where you revealed that you'd gone back to your changing room and you had the sort of this sort of suicidal ideation about the future most people didn't realize the extent of it until then did you literally have suicidal ideation in the days and hours following the fight no it was basically like instantly when I came backstage uh but you know um suicide is the kind of thing that becomes more prevalent if you know it's in your family and I've literally had two generations of suicide ahead of me it's just something that um it's always a like a an option in your mind once it's shown to you you know um but I think that the fact that I was with Trav then my husband now that I just didn't want to like take the pain that I had in me and give it to him because that's what how I experienced suicide was like okay it's you get to relieve yourself of that pain but you have to you passed on to everybody else and um my my you know but my dad was dying anyway he wouldn't have been able to prevent his his death and he was you know physically suffering every day and so that so I understand that and um I didn't feel like I had that same kind of justification that I wasn't going to die anyway so um I was going going to live for him and for my family so that they wouldn't have to to to take the pain that I was feeling onto them was that the hardest moment in your professional career professionally yeah was it the hardest moment in your personal life no losing my dad was course you went on to fight Amanda Nunes as at UFC 207 in 2016 and the the fight um ends again and after this you come to the decision that your time at the UFC is over and you decide to to move on to the WWE there's a sort of a two-year Gap I believe between about a one-year gap between the Nunes fight and the WWE announcement what happens in your life in that Gap um I was mostly just being sad I was just like sad and high and playing video games and eating Crepes I mean everybody wants to rush you through grieving things but you know
I think it's important and so I took that time to myself I was also just so worn out from you know like I said Running on Fumes for years on end and like literally dragging myself out of bed every morning and like having to dig deep every second of the day that I just you know wanted to dig deep and just disappear I had you know Paparazzi and all kinds of crazy [ __ ] happening at the time and I just just like didn't want to be famous anymore so um it was always more of a tool than a goal and now that I didn't have fights to promote I didn't need it anymore but I guess it wasn't done with me so I kind of had to like um disappear for a while to be left alone were you doing anything professionally during that period we just at home um I mean I um oh just at home I feel like I just needed to not give anymore I don't think anyone can understand how exhausted I was and how much it had been asked of me for so long that I just needed to rest I needed a mentally and physically rest and um but people of you know dug deep enough to make it to two Olympics and win 15 fights in a row you know not people a lot of people understand how much effort that takes and um just sounds like numbers when you say it but when you live it it's just like I literally had nothing left in me I could barely get out of bed so I mean it's not the kind of like tired that you can take a long sleep from and wake up refreshed you know like it's like the kind attire that takes like a year to recover from is that is that depression in your yes so you could you could call it depression um but you know I I didn't see anyone get diagnosed your your husband was there throughout that period with you yeah he was there the whole time he was the one supplying the Crepes yeah he's amazing he he really was you know helped drag me out of my own hole and I'm very much like you know like a Gollum cave creature in general like I just will like not not leave my my little Den um but he's like very much a social butterfly and he would make sure that
like okay you need to go out and interact with human beings and I'm like no which you know it's always kind of been how I was I I always struggled socially and stuff like that um which is why I got into Judo was to be able to like socialize and just be able to talk and communicate and so um I just kind of reverted back to like my my hermit Tendencies and yeah Trav literally had to like drag me out of my hole and um I'm glad you did but um yeah I would easily SL slide back into the Misty Mountains anytime I was allowed did he understand what you were going through psychologically in that period were you able to communicate it Tim um I think he understood to an extent like he uh he had a different kind of incredible story where he started fighting at 26 and then was the number one contender in at the UFC in as much time it is it took me to be the number one contender in the UFC so he was like incredibly naturally talented but he hadn't been you know um pursuing a goal of athletic greatness since he was six the way that I had and so um just the disappointment of you know never going never winning an Olympic gold medal and never being able to retire undefeated and those kind of like lifelong goals um I don't think a lot of people understand that but he also was still like so supportive and there for me you know and he never got fed up with me moping around and literally crying over like eggs if I like know broke the Yol and be like I can't even make you eggs you know and like just being like that for like yeah over a year and stuff and his like he's just such incredible love patience it was just like there for me all the time and just like bring me in and hold me when I needed it even if he didn't like understand why I was so sad he was like there for it anyway so yeah he's the best thing that ever happened to me I love him so much but yeah he might not have understood it so much but he was still there for me you knew you're going to get me at some point I told you I'm emotional no I no it's often in those moments um our hardest moments that we realize as you said earlier who we've got around us but also the value of certain people in our lives I think in my hardest times in my life that's
that's following those times is when I realized who really really mattered and my partner in particular through my hardest moments I've you go through the the Dark Canyon of these tough times in life and you emerg that person walked through it with you and you go [ __ ] hell this person now I understand how much they mean to me sometimes it takes that to understand what someone means to you um and it certainly sounds like that moment crystallized what Travis means to you in your life as well yeah I think when we first got together we went through so much stuff that would have driven anybody else apart but it really just brought us all brought us brought the two of us closer together and I'm just so glad that we were with each other when we were going through the hardest times that we didn't have to go through it alone what is the WWE come in so that's ultimately what sort of I guess pulled you out of your little cave there but yeah I I had to get out of the cave and in front of like a crowd of thousands of people alive of course which is really funny because I really don't like it I don't like being in front of crowds and a bunch of people and I hate public speaking but I just love the stuff that I get to do while doing it you know um but yeah I like kind of my friends uh the the four hseen Shea Jasmine and Marina that were like of friends that I made I mean I knew Marina back from Judo and I met cha and jasine through MMA and like we really became like really close in that group and you know for me for how hard it was for me to like socialize and make friends like these were like my girls you know and they all started getting into pro wrestling and um I just started doing it for fun and it was just so fun and like it wasn't a competition it was everyone working together to try and do something great together and so it reminded me more of like you know like filming action movies and doing fight choreography except for it was kind of like in its purest form where you have to tell the story like the movie you have like the movie part and then there's a fight and then the story and like usually the fight is like separate from that and I feel like pro wrestling is like the the purest form of combat storytelling because you can only tell
the story through the com that I was just fascinated with that especially you know want to be Bruce Lee and um and it became that thing that like I started to fixate on and wanted to be better and better at it and just would um go into training and lose track of time and realized that I've been going for 5 hours kind of a thing and um and I love that feeling of being lost in something uh told my friend I was telling somebody like passion is my passion I'd just love to be passionate about things and you know know I guess that flow state is fun and I just love being in it and um so um yeah then I started just training for fun and then um then uh ended up you know getting I didn't really get an opportunity to go to WWE I was kind of like hey guys I want to do this and then they were like okay um and yeah then just kind of snowballed into cuz at first I was like okay I want to have a baby soon and it'd be kind of cool to go and do some pro wrestling for a couple months before I go and have my baby and then it just kind of like snowballed into this whole beast and this whole like other life that I didn't know that um I was going to have but it was very much like like a calling much more than a Pursuit if that made sense you know once upon a time if you had a business idea it was exceptionally difficult to get going but now in the age of Shopify it is exceptionally easy as many of you will know Shopify are a sponsor of this podcast if you don't know Shopify it's an exceptionally simple web platform for anybody that's got an idea that wants to transact on a global scale so things like these conversation cards which we sell we've sold using Shopify and it only took us a couple of clicks to get going so why did we choose Shopify for a number of reasons but I think one of the big ones which goes unappreciated is their checkout system converts 36% better compared to other platforms and here's what I'm going to do to remove the cost for you if you go to shopify.com Bartlet you'll be able to try Shopify for $1 a month I've seen Shopify completely change people's lives and for many of you I think it could change yours one of the things that surpris surprised me and again it's because if
we only get to see this sort of 2D representation of someone on a screen whether they're you know through your wrestling career or UFC career which is kind of like it's kind of like all of it's kind of like acting the press conferences the bravado is in your book you talk about how comments online and com newspaper comments and stuff would get to you I mean you know starts off like that but yeah um at first you know um when everything was going great it was like I would look at my comments like the morning newspaper I'd wake up in the morning and look at my comments I look at my tag photos and it's so unhealthy but um but after my first loss I quit cold turkeying which I feel like that was one thing that I needed to do was to like not constantly need that um outside validation and stuff like that especially from the internet and social media and stuff and I was kind of like spiraling in a way and and kind of like giving that way too much stock in my like emotional you know State and stuff stuff like that and um and then pro wrestling you're literally in front of a a crowd that is like the embodiment of a comment section in front of yourself um but um you know that's also why I really uh enjoyed being a heel which I you know wish they would have let me be a heel more often because um that's why I feel like I was happy happiest when I wasn't trying to plate to the crowd purposely try to you know piss them off and get a rise out of them and not trying to um constantly you know um Pander I was surprised to hear about the WWE that they kind of rewrite the script last minute and that it's not I don't you think of such a big business you imagine they got script writers and the scripts are written you would think it wouldn't be an absolute cluster [ __ ] [ __ ] show and you would be wrong wow yeah yeah it and it's so needlessly dangerous like no one can is like a lot of times people can't rehearse things have changed last minute a lot of times you see them outside they're performing they've only talked about it and they're doing it for the first time so a lot of these injuries happen because people just weren't able to rehearse and the company doesn't give a [ __ ] because we're all Expendable to them did you feel Expendable to the UFC to the WWE
yes yeah I think you all we all did and they they made sure to make us feel that way why they made sure to make you feel that way yeah so that you wouldn't get above your station or something or so that you would just do whatever you're told yeah just do whatever you're told just take it and you're all contractors at at the WWE as well so you're not employees you have to pay for your own health care and all these kinds of things from what I read in your book yep which is pretty crazy I mean that would never be allowed in uh where I'm from in the UK and it's sort of Vince McMahon's Kingdom yeah well I mean supposedly he's out now because they you know caught him paying py company funds so he can show on some girls head in the office and you know do a threesome with her Johnny laurenitis but um his cronies are still there and so when that stuff started coming out and Vince was gone before he was still basically just calling it in and running the company and um but yeah like Bruce Pritchard who's there now who's still like the head of creative or whatever title they gave him um is basically just taking orders from Vince and still running the company through him and so when Vince was uh uh resigned formally because of all these like sexual allegations and stuff that were coming out um he was still running the company informally and I think he still is to this day you don't have a a whole lot of nice things to say about these people I mean depends on who the girls in locker room I absolutely love them the people at the top running yeah I mean Stephen Triple H I think they're honest ly doing their best but I mean I think that Vince McMahon just created a fundamentally sick environment and uh I think if if Ari is going to be able is going to be able if Ari Emanuel who bought it out from WME is going to be able to actually make this multi-billion dollar dysfunctional organization into one that functions he's got to clean out all of Vince's cronies he's got to completely clean house and uh remove Vince's influence completely but um you know no one's asking me but that's just what I experienced when Vince was gone he was still running the show through um you know people that he'd hired in the past Bruce Pritchard
being number one of them Bruce pritchard's still there I believe yeah John laurenitis took like he he was uh he was cut loose because he got named specifically in in the Scandal but uh yeah Bruce pitchard is literally I'd never heard him say a single one of his own opinions he'd only said that Vince says this Vince says that Vince says this Vince says this Vince Vince Vince Vince and so he's literally just like you know I I called him Vince's Avatar that's basically what he is you returned to the UFC after you left in 2019 um you were there till from 2017 to 2019 and um in 2017 you is when you got married with Travis I couldn't figure out from the from the dates I didn't think the date was in your book but at some point during this journey you you start trying to have children mhm um something I'm trying now with my partner on that process as well and you talk in the book about a really heartbreaking incident where you're filming a TV show with 911 the TV show 911 um and there was a a fight scenes and various stunts in that movie and a day after that you suffered a miscarriage yeah I um well I found out I was pregnant right before the show started filming and then I um my finger got chopped off from a boat door falling on it and um but you know the we got we went and checked out and there's you know the baby seemed just fine uh but then I miscarried a couple weeks later so I kind of always felt like that was my fault that I wanted to keep doing dangerous stuff while I was pregnant because I thought it made me cool and then um and then I was just like depressed and like drinking and smoking not taking care of myself and then got pregnant right away again and then we never even saw a heartbeat that time but I wasn't expecting anything more cuz I just wasn't taken care of myself so you had two miscarriages two miscarriages yeah and then I went through IVF four Cycles to IVF to be able to get eight embryos CU we wanted to have like three or four kids and the first one that we used um actually worked that that's you know Thea my daughter now but um but yeah we're in the process of doing it right now and I just got news yesterday that our first cycle didn't
work so it's tough anyone going through is tough and like people just don't talk about it but you know it's hard CU you have like so much hope every time and and um yeah I don't know I'll just have to wait till the end of this book tour to try again but I was really hoping to be pregnant today but you know it's the kind of thing that like nobody talks about so and so so many women think they're going through it alone but um uh it's really really common but it's just it's really hard when things don't work out so many women and couples are going through this and as you as you say it's not something we talk about because the mixture of feelings Sur in it are comp complex to say the least yeah I think like you know no one wants to burden anybody else with what they're going through but a lot of times it's not you're not burdening other people you're you know I don't know if it's like camaraderie but you're offering something to to other people that are going through the same thing and a lot of times it's like a woman you can feel like it's you know your fault but you know your Peak productive years are your Peak Athletic years so I I decided to use those on my career and um you know thankfully I was able to get a bunch of embryos when I was young and hopefully you know we'll be able to still have a couple more kids but you know I still I got my PO and I got my boys so you know I got a lot more than than most than a lot of people that have been through it but you know so you got three kids in total two of them are from Travis's previous relationship with his previous partner where you're now the stepmother and you've had a daughter of your own yeah people don't understand the because there are people that have gone through this and they understand although because no one's talking about it they've not had their feelings echoed by someone publicly before and then there's this other group of people that have never been through the sort of IVF journey of success failure failure success failure etc for those people that have never experienced it what what is that like what the complexity of the
emotions that you you experience in thoughts it's just a grind It's a Grind and it's really hard on you mentally and physically your body and um like like um this last cycle I wasn't allowed to like you know work out or anything for weeks on end and so it's like my first time around when I had to do like four Cycles in a row and then the transfer cycle I mean like I I was like just not recognizing able physically and um and uh just mentally so worn out you're on all these kind of hormones and you're going through this like emotional roller coaster and stuff and you just you can't really talk about it you know and um and uh yeah sometimes like like I would you know have just people that are like psychotic trolls that like try and follow me around online and like braak me about these kind of things about like at the time mind like not not having a a kid when I was trying and and stuff like that and that's I guess the the way you have to live with being a public figure but and you're not supposed to say anything about it because how dare you not be grateful for your good fortune but man it um it it sucks when you're going through it and you feel like you know the world is also still looking over your shoulder and you're not living up to you know your own expectations I don't know um if there's a I don't know if there's a feminine word for emasculating but is uh you know eminating it feels like if you if you can't naturally have like a baby like I mean my doctor was like if you probably if you stopped smoking and drinking you could have a baby like you know smoke a bunch of weed and drinking you naturally have a baby but because we wanted to have so many he was like you should get all your embryos now so when you're older you can take your time and and do it and so it's just like yeah it's tough because as a woman you have to choose am I going to go for a career during my Peak years or am I going to like go for kids and so know luckily you know science makes it so you can have both but it doesn't make it easy this has been very front to mind for me because um because I'm trying now and uh I've actually sat here yesterday with two fertility doctors two different
fertility doctors because I really wanted to understand the whole process and understand because you know I think people typically think that fertility is a a female thing but the fertilities do doctors told me quite clearly that when they go through the IVF rounds it's 50/50 typically as to why sort of a baby isn't conceived it's 50% of the time it's the man 50% of the time it's the woman and so I I'm really grateful that you share that because lots of people are struggling and increasingly the IVF clinics I think I think of the top of my head have grown 90% in popularity over the last couple of years and because we're having our careers are being extended further and um a variety of other things but sperm counts are dropping testosterone levels are dropping it's only going to get more common yeah and one thing I will say that's great about it is because I did go through twoe pregnancies that you know my my doctor told me it was probably because it wasn't because you chopped your finger off it wasn't because if you were drinking or smoking like it was because there were um genetically not conducive to life and so the great thing with IVF is you get these embryos and you can have them tested first and then you you don't have to make a decision at 20 weeks long of like oh your baby has this kind of you know disorder Mal formality and have to make that decision and so you know that they're they're healthy going into it but then when you put all that effort into it and you you finally do it and then it doesn't work out I mean that's that's crushing in itself too you know so it's it's tough I mean science is amazing but um it is like a really difficult process to go through what is your happiness from these days you've had a real sort of uh a pivot in terms of where you look for happiness over the last couple of years yeah I mean my happiness is every day with my family that's that's what it is and I'm so lucky that I get to be like you know retired in my mid-30s and um be able to spend like all my time with my my my husband and my kids and like to be there for them and to be able not have to like worry about so much you know and get to just focus on them and um yeah I don't know just day to day I I just I
mean I say like I'm retired but like I still do stuff but I don't do stuff with the intention of like I have to pay the bills with this and so yeah I mean I'm not like only like only my my husand only a wife and mom like I started uh uh writing as just a way to like kind of help me from you know not fixating on like my myself or picking at myself and got into like screenwriting and um which is just like a really great way for if I'm having like just you know not like a destructive thought process or something like that that I can like turn my mind into towards something creative and actually like make something out of all of that you know mental energy that I'm just turning Inward and like hurting myself with and so um so then came out with this book and I've actually I'm working on my fourth script right now and my first one's being made into a comic book and um which I touch on in another book too but it's also like doing these kind of things not with the intention of like making millions of dollars or you know impressing a bunch of people but just that the act of it is so fun like I'm a I'm interning right now at the story department at WME that's what I was working on in the car yeah I'm learning um how to be a reader and write coverages and just you know read lots of lots of scripts and make me a better writer and like learn like the Dark Art of like writing coverages which people don't see they're not at public but to be able to just still a script down to his few words as possible and know what you're looking for and all these things and just kind of like learning these skills that I'm really fascinated in and um that's just like validating in themselves you know and like and with our Ranch and everything like that and raising our cows and like my favorite part is we took this land in Oregon that was like completely degraded you know had been mismanaged for years there was more dirt than there was grass and to be able to we're using regenerative practices with our wagu and our and our py to be able to like bring this land back to life you know so that was like been more rewarding to me than reading a whole morning of positive comments on a freaking picture is actually like going out and like seeing this land become better and um like that kind of stuff is
like really rewarding and I don't have to worry about you know uh promoting it or what people will think of it or how much money I'm making from it so yeah like I'm retired but I'm busy it must be difficult to go from those Arenas that I watched you in all around the world with all those people screaming and cheering to this Farm in Oregon because I don't know I don't know one assumes that the ADR we always talk about this adrenaline rush that you get from fighting and competing the opposite of that is a farm and Oregon I guess so but I mean I love my favorite crowds to like wrestle in front of are like small crowds I love being like in a small non-televised crowd that's my favorite and like fight I could fight in a closet I could fight in Arena it's not making it better to me you know I just want to win the fight like the fight itself is what I care about that's what gave me the joy I was completely blocking them out I mean they're they're welcome to be there but they're it's but they're not that they're not part of my actual experience of the fight itself I mean winning and everyone being like w i mean that's an incredible feeling that's great but um but that's not why I got into it I didn't get into like you know Judo isn't like a big sport that there's going to be crowds of people cheering for you for you know you anyone that's crazy enough to want to win Olympic gold medal and anything it's not because they want to be famous or they want a whole bunch of people to know or cheer for them it's because they want to be the best at something and I just love that process of go going from knowing nothing about something to mastering it I love the process of Mastery you you used the word earlier on self-destructive thoughts am I right in thinking that your self-destructive thoughts which appear to still be with you today are the reason in part why you you were so great when it came to the UFC and fighting yeah I guess like you know enter that that flow State I guess of being like so um lost in doing something that you can't think of anything else everything else just appears like that was always my favorite place to be you know in swimming I didn't have that your mind was left to wander while you're swimming or in Judo you know there's nothing happening except for what's happening in
front of you and fighting there's nothing going on except for what's going on in front of you and in pro wrestling there's nothing going on except for the the reality you created in this match that you're in and um yeah I I love being completely lost in the in the task of doing something the best that you can like that's something that's addicting and I guess something that I still do now you know trying to do like through through writing and and everything like that but um I don't know I just uh I guess it's just U where my where my happy place is but you know do you still have those self-destructive thoughts today oh yeah I mean all the time but I mean it's just kind of like something you'll like wake up and be like oh my God I remember that thing that you said several years ago that was so stupid remember that thing you tweeted you stupid [ __ ] like you know like just things that like come up that you can't do anything about it but um just you know ruminate and sometimes it's like you know try not to think of a blue duck kind of a thing yeah and a lot of times it's like that it's sometimes I'll be in in the middle of something great and I'll just be like don't think of something bad and then because of that it'll like pop up in my head and yeah I don't know did you go to therapy at any point in your career I mean I've tried but I'm you know my mom's a psychologist so you know uh anyone that I went to talk too I was just kind of like you're not as smart as my mom yeah but I I tempted but I've never found anyone that I really like clicked with but I've given it a couple shots but Ian I mean maybe it's not for everybody I don't think it's for me the other picture that I found when I was doing my research is this beautiful picture here and the question I have for you is about the lessons you learned from this man oh I'm going to keep this you can keep both of them ah lessons I learned you know I wish I remembered more we don't even have video or anything you know very few pictures um but I don't know like it's just more of like examples that he gave me of how to actually like be a man and how to be a great husband like my mom and dad were so in love with
each other I remember they would like make out over our breakfast and be like e yeah I know but um he was like so in love with my mom and she was so in love with him and um I think that's why I was smart enough to wait until Trav to get married because I knew what I was looking for and so he showed me what a loving husband and father is and you know he's the one that when my mom was so worried about you know me being late developmentally and all these things my mom said he was the one that was always like you know Ronnie's as sleeper she's going to show everybody and so he was always the one that like believed that I was going to be like exceptional and put that belief in my mind that I am exceptional and I'm going to do incredible things and so yeah so didn't never forgot it I guess I think he was right you named after him right he's called Ron yeah I was supposed to be Ronald John Rousey Jr but I'm a girl so I'm Ronda Jee Rousey the first not the last and you did show everyone that's exactly what you did in your career you showed everyone and um you know it's funny because I I'm a big UFC fan so I watched your career enjoyed it so much you gave me some incredible moments throughout all of the the sort of those major fights that you had and it's interesting because from reading your book and speaking to you today I realized the very human cost of the entertainment that I enjoyed as a fan I behind that sat someone who is quite clearly pretty obsessed with winning being Mastery in your own words and being the very best at everything you apply yourself to and with that comes a cost you know we don't have to pay the cost as fans we just get to enjoy the entertainment and so it's very easy I think without the full picture being illuminated to not pay tribute to someone who gave us so much fans but in behind the scenes had to struggle in really profound ways from the age of 6 years old um for that joy that you brought to all of our lives so on behalf of fans that do understand the full piture i' personally want to say thank you so much for that because um yeah you know I I used to step up at 3:00 4 a.m. in the morning in the UK to watch you fight because you were like nothing I'd ever seen you know you defined the
division you you basically created the the concept of women fighting in the UFC and you did it in a way with a style that I'd never seen before and frankly haven't really seen since so thank you for that I know it's difficult I I can tell from when you talk about those moments how difficult it still is but that's what I would expect from someone who is one of the real goats of the sport thank you for writing this book as well it's um incredibly honest and I think it's perfectly written in many respects but the timing of it is perfect because you're in a certain chapter of your life where you're able to look back on all of these experiences with a certain retrospect Ive Clarity and wisdom that is incredibly helpful and you found yourself on the other side of all of this stuff now as a as a mother and as a as a normal human away from the the WWE and the UFC and from that perspective I think everyone can learn a tremendous amount about life about happiness about family about committing yourselves to Something in the way in with the form of Mastery that you had um but also more more than anything what I take from it is what really matters in life and I think that's if I've interpreted it correctly as the real objective of the book we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for uh oh why does everyone get scared when I when I go to this diary okay I don't know okay interesting fear the unknown it's not it's not it's not terrifying sometimes they're horrific um what was the most fun moment of your entire life of my entire life yeah most fun God I mean I've had a lot of [Laughter] fun um they're probably intimate moments with my husband that I can't share but we have a good time he'll be happy for the shout out I think that's what matters Ronda Rousey AR fight out available everywhere right now um an incredible book and I recommend everyone to go and get it thank you so much Ronda thank you for having me [Music] oh