- Ronda Rousey opened up about struggling to be physically fit to compete in the UFC and being forced to retire
- “Rowdy” reflected on why she always felt that the UFC women’s division relied on her success
Ronda Rousey admitted to retiring from MMA because she couldn’t be physically at her best anymore and talked about why she felt like she carried the weight of the UFC’s entire women’s division.
Not fit to fight
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, “Rowdy” once again attributed her retirement from MMA to her health condition. According to Rousey, the blows she took in the head resulted in some serious neurological issues which later prompted her to call it quits.
“I’m just not neurologically fit to compete anymore at the highest level. I just can’t,” Rousey confided. “You just get to a level where the neurological injuries you take accumulate over time, they don’t get better and when I got into MMA I had already had dozens of concussions.”
“So when I got into MMA, I was playing a game of zero errors and then it got to a point where I was fighting more often than anybody, I had more outside of fighting responsibilities than anybody and it just got to be that lighter and lighter hits were hurting me more and more and more and it got to a point where I couldn’t take a jab without getting like, dazed, without getting concussion symptoms and it just got to a point where it just wasn’t safe for me to fight anymore and I just couldn’t continue to fight at that higher level,” she added.
Being the face of UFC women’s division
Rousey also looked back at the time when she put the UFC women’s division on the map. In retrospect, “Rowdy” had always felt as if the entire division’s future lies on her and what she would accomplish.
Rousey revealed that back then, the UFC was having an “experiment” with the women’s division and their existence depended on her success.
“I wanted to retire. I was trying to find a way out already. But, it was all dependent on me,” Rousey reflected. “And I also realized that because what I learned from pro wrestling is that retiring undefeated would have been such a selfish goal to be able to accomplish, because I would have taken all of that equity with me. And no one would have respected the rest of the women that I left behind.”
“Nobody retires with a belt in the WWE. You have to give it away. So, I kind of learned that through WWE, which kind of helped me to get through a lot of that stuff and process it when it’s about the division,” she added.
“People forget how fragile that situation was and how last-minute, I was able to get us in… once the women were bought to the UFC, he [Dana] said [from] the beginning, this is an experiment, this is to see how it goes and then it got to a point where we had to see how it would go without me because it was so dependent on me,” she pointed out.
Despite being linked to numerous rumors about UFC return, Rousey never made her comeback with the promotion. She last fought under the UFC banner in 2016 in which she lost to Amanda Nunes via TKO at UFC 207.
Watch Rousey’s full interview below:
