Ronda Rousey reached the top in UFC and WWE however had an unceremonious exit from each organizations. It seems an undisclosed historical past of concussions abruptly ended her run with every promotion.
The previous UFC girls’s bantamweight champion left the promotion in 2016 following consecutive knockout losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes. Her swift cut up from combined martial arts and dismissive angle in direction of her UFC tenure soured followers who perceived her as bitter. In line with Rousey, it was her “concussion historical past” predating her MMA run that had her tight-lipped.
“I needed to preserve [it] secret for years, so I might be capable of proceed to compete and carry out,” Rousey instructed followers on Instagram Dwell whereas teasing content material from her upcoming memoir, Our Combat.
“I feel that there was simply a lot to [that Holm loss], that I could not speak about it within the type of like an interview or an article or something like that, or there could be a number of filters between my phrases and other people studying it. A lot needed to do with having so many concussions once I was in judo earlier than I even acquired into MMA, I could not speak about it in any respect once I was doing MMA. As a result of it would actually put a goal on my head, and I won’t have been allowed to compete any additional.”
Rousey’s concussions performed a direct position in ending her legendary MMA profession.
“That is mainly why I needed to retire,” Rousey mentioned.
Rousey stored the concussions below wraps even after she retired from fight sports activities. It was a calculated danger to afford her a second high-profile profession. Rousey made sporadic appearances for WWE beginning in 2014 and signed onto the corporate full-time in 2017. Her time in skilled wrestling led to 4 championship reigns, changing into the eighth girls’s triple crown champion and profitable the 2022 girls’s Royal Rumble match.
“Identical factor with WWE,” Rousey mentioned. “They’ve an advanced historical past with their performers getting concussions, and it might be a nasty look on them. So I felt like I actually could not speak about it in any respect. So I really feel like this [is the] lengthy kind that I might be capable of adequately deal with it.”
Rousey had a quiet departure from WWE after dropping an “MMA Guidelines” match to her longtime buddy and fellow UFC alum Shayna Baszler at SummerSlam in 2023. She subsequently wrestled two matches elsewhere — together with one in Ring of Honor — teaming with MMA fighter-turned-pro wrestler Marina Shafir. Rousey subsequently retired for the second time.
“A very arduous choice to know, however one which my physique actually made for me,” Rousey mentioned. “I really feel like that is the one solution to actually get that throughout in the most effective, most full approach that it is not only a tweet and a headline brief.”
Rousey’s autobiography Our Combat will probably be launched on April 2.