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people don't know about this I had to keep it a
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[Music] secret uh it's really really
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difficult Ronda Ronda you have voted the best
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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
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was tough my dad he ended up taking his life when I was eight and in school I
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got picked on a lot I actually dropped out when I was 16 and moved away from
00:00:42
home to train full-time but a lot of the coaches thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best
00:00:48
results my first coach just located my job people don't know about this but I get concussions all the time and every
00:00:55
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
00:01:01
person off immediately it was those experiences that made me the world champion and you stacked up a bunch of
00:01:08
records including the fastest ever win fastest submission fastest title
00:01:13
defense but then that loss to hly just like
00:01:18
that yeah my whole world turned upside down I had to disappear for a while and
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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
00:01:31
sick environment and I think he still is running the company to this day
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why before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74% of people that watched this
00:01:44
channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69% my goal is 50% so if you've ever
00:01:51
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
00:01:57
and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this
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[Music]
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episode wonda when I interview people I often ask them to tell me the most sort
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of pertinent first event in their story that went on to shape who they are and
00:02:20
with you from reading through your story it's quite clear that the first potentially significant event happened
00:02:27
as you were being born yeah I uh I was born with the UL cord around my neck and uh I was like a
00:02:34
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
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it took a while to revive me and um I had uh some damage from that um some
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neurological damage which expressed itself as a motor speech disorder called proxia which is basically I would have
00:02:57
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
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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
00:03:09
get over it and sometimes I uh I struggle a little bit but uh um I've
00:03:15
I've you know dealt with it well enough where people don't notice but uh you know doing things like pro wrestling
00:03:20
promos and stuff where everybody like will uh scrutinize you for like saying a single syllable or you know not
00:03:27
producing every single not pronouncing every single word per perfectly like if I just stuttered like I did just now or
00:03:34
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
00:03:40
little things like that that still Express themselves to this day but mostly it's not noticeable now the
00:03:46
umbilical cord was wrapped around your neck the doctors gave you a zero out of 10 in terms of your health when you were
00:03:53
a baby what age did you learn to speak properly um I didn't really speak like
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in full intelligible sentences until I was like around 5 or so when they did
00:04:05
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
00:04:12
brain scan or anything like that I got tested for deafness for a long time autism um aoia didn't exist as a
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diagnosis until after I'd kind of really gotten over it um it was actually like a
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a like a fan a mom and her daughter that uh brought me like a pamphlet and was
00:04:31
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
00:04:39
and I was like oh my God this actually fits everything that we experiened perfectly and uh we ended up having a
00:04:45
walk for a proxy here I got to like meet a bunch of different kids and stuff that were dealing with similar things but
00:04:50
yeah it's kind of like newer on uh on in the field people being aware of it but I
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think that's what made me um delve into sport so much because um you know with
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Judo especially you like communicate physically with a person you have to put your hands on another person you have to
00:05:09
talk and interact with that person and so when I was having a hard time uh when we moved back to LA like really
00:05:15
socializing with other kids sports you know specifically Judo made it like kind
00:05:21
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
00:05:27
home life like for you before the age of 10 I mean I thought everything was
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perfect and awesome uh my my dad passed when I was eight though and um I didn't
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know but he had broken his back in a suing accident when we'd first moved to
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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
00:05:55
uh diagnoses basically saying he'd become like a paraplegic in the then a quadriplegic could eventually die and um
00:06:02
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
00:06:09
eight but he'd been going through that for years but had kept it from us and
00:06:15
so then like my kind of my whole world turned upside down and then my mom ended
00:06:20
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
00:06:28
San mon Venice your father had a sledding accident he he's told that he's
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going to be a quadriplegic soon yes at some point he broke his back and um his
00:06:41
disease called bardar syndrome makes it difficult to clot your blood it's like a platelet you know your platelets are Mal
00:06:48
malformed and uh so he wasn't able to heal basically and uh they put a rod in
00:06:54
his back to try and help it heal but his spine was just crumbling away so his spine was basically like falling apart
00:07:00
he died by Suicide yeah he uh he said he didn't want his our last memories of him
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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
00:07:13
being you know doped up on painkiller so he just wanted to go out his own
00:07:18
way did you have any idea that he was suffering at that time none at all completely kept it from
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us so so one minute he's there and and then the next minute he's not
00:07:34
yeah how did you find out that he had died by Suicide um my mom told me right you know
00:07:42
right after it happened how how how does a mother explain that to an 8-year-old
00:07:51
child I mean she's a PhD in educational psychology so very you know technically
00:07:57
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
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we wanted to keep it from you cuz uh she said that my dad just wanted us to be
00:08:10
kids and not have to worry about it she told you the details of his his suicide
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yeah what impact does that have on you um I mean in the long run I felt like it
00:08:23
just kind of gave me this feeling that even if I feel like everything is okay that everything can come crashing down
00:08:28
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
00:08:36
about to drop you know and um that's something that I had to like
00:08:41
you know work through till this day and I feel like mostly I'm I can feel pretty
00:08:47
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
00:08:53
Daddy's girl yeah but part of the speech therapy was that my sisters were talking for me and so
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uh he had to work uh a little bit of a drive from the house so he would be um
00:09:06
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
00:09:12
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
00:09:18
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
00:09:27
world it's um it's almost done imaginable for an 8-year-old to try and process that in reality and like the
00:09:33
because I think at 8 years old you don't understand the concept of suicide or why
00:09:38
you know why a human could die by Suicide and at that age what is the
00:09:45
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
00:09:51
going to return at some point yeah well that's the only time that he would really be gone away from the house for
00:09:57
extended periods of times cuz he had like a business trip or something and so that was just kind of like what I told
00:10:02
myself to cope for for a while but then I found out later that uh my grandfather
00:10:08
committed suicide as well so he was a second generation
00:10:15
suicide your siblings and your mother the impact of the loss on your dad on them was that noticeable did you notice
00:10:23
a change in them my my like sister didn't ever really want to talk talk about it and I
00:10:29
I think you know my uh yeah no one really wanted to talk
00:10:34
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
00:10:42
champion in her own right yeah in everything she um got a perfect score on
00:10:47
the SATs at 16 graduated college at 19 um then she won the World
00:10:52
Championships in Judo the first American to ever win the World Championships in Judo while she was working as a single
00:10:58
mother engineer and getting her PhD in educational psychology wow yeah she's
00:11:04
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
00:11:12
her and I found this picture of her y That's mom she looks like a badass
00:11:19
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
00:11:26
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
00:11:33
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
00:11:40
family heirloom as the armar yeah the family
00:11:45
armar I I often think that um our childhoods and those sort of early formative experiences and the traumas
00:11:51
that we experience they leave fingerprints on us in various ways that follow us for the rest of our lives um
00:11:58
for good for bad bad and sometimes for ugly when you think about those sort of first 10 years of your life and the
00:12:03
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
00:12:10
most sort of ingrained in you from that time of your life what's most ingrained
00:12:15
in me from being a kid um well I think like you know like
00:12:21
losing a parent is a huge format of event have you ever read a blink by Malcolm Gladwell no but I've spoken to
00:12:27
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
00:12:33
up being uh more successful statistically later in life and uh it's
00:12:38
like well he he's the one that delved into into his book but um you know when
00:12:43
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
00:12:50
stuff like really pushing me towards Sports and like being physical and and things like that and being the youngest
00:12:56
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
00:13:01
constantly be able to like prove myself as you know not just being a little baby
00:13:07
but deserving of respect and stuff like that and those kind of like made me into
00:13:13
um the kind of kid that would when I first started swimming I wanted to win the Olympics and swimming when I first
00:13:18
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
00:13:24
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
00:13:30
and so I was just always fed that expectation that I could do everything and at sort of 10 years old you moved to
00:13:36
Santa Monica um and you had your first attempt and try at Judo is that
00:13:43
right yeah I um well I was swimming here but I wasn't so much into swimming
00:13:48
it's kind of boring and uh I didn't like waking up in the morning and jumping in a cold pool I
00:13:56
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
00:14:02
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
00:14:07
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
00:14:14
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
00:14:20
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
00:14:27
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
00:14:34
mentally engaging I think that's why I liked it so much and uh uh when I won my
00:14:40
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
00:14:45
the state but I wouldn't like really win swimming meets and so um first time I
00:14:50
won something I got like addicted to that feeling I guess so I actually dropped out of school when I was 16 to
00:14:58
be able to train and do Judo full-time and move away from home to train full-time what was your mother's opinion
00:15:05
on you doing Judo seeing as she was a a champion in Judo herself when her daughter turns around and says mom I
00:15:10
want to do Judo too um I mean I can't really say how she felt but I mean I was kind of like
00:15:17
identified as being like a prodigy of Judo pretty young and uh
00:15:23
she wanted to kind of take an outside role of making sure that I was training with all the right people at the right
00:15:30
time she wasn't the person that was on like she of course taught me everything that that she could and um but she
00:15:36
didn't really want to be that overbearing coach Mom on the match you more of like was like you go here train
00:15:43
with this person you go here train with that person was like the overarching like architect of my career and
00:15:48
everything like that you um you went to your first tournament and you win the tournament with instant wins ions I
00:15:55
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
00:16:00
tournament people start considering you to be this child prodigy in Judo what was it about when you look back on
00:16:06
yourself now with all the wisdom you have what was it about you that made you
00:16:12
Excel above your peers Judo what was it about your character something that you did uh I mean there had to be some sort
00:16:19
of genetic Factor cuz like my mom and my dad are both like good athletes um but I
00:16:26
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
00:16:33
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
00:16:40
like a week I was so upset but I was willing to get my heart broken I was
00:16:46
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
00:16:53
know I think I felt like the idea of being better at something than everybody else like made me special somehow it was
00:16:59
like proof and it was also it wasn't like I was dragging myself through doing
00:17:04
it to be great at something because that's what it was I I really enjoyed
00:17:10
like mastering the art of Judo like figuring it out it was like endlessly intriguing to me at the time and I
00:17:16
remember when I was 16 I like realized while I was you know
00:17:22
doing nawaza which is fighting on the ground that the end of one move was the
00:17:28
beginning have another one and that's when I moov from like trying to memorize all these separate techniques to trying
00:17:34
to um combine them into like a path and like a web and I um I didn't come up and
00:17:41
you know naaza and Judo is not the focus of the sport really um maybe it's like
00:17:46
20% of the time people spend on the ground maybe less but it wasn't like Gracie Jiu-Jitsu where they like show
00:17:54
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
00:18:00
create like my own like system basically my own fighting style and everything like that and that was I think the most
00:18:06
interesting to me that I was like creating a philosophy and everything and Concepts and how how did I piece
00:18:13
everything together and so um I think that was the most interesting part I I could train for hours and hours and
00:18:19
hours and hours and not realize that I'm tired because I'm trying to piece something together um but I also I think
00:18:26
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
00:18:34
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
00:18:41
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
00:18:47
would do it for hours on end trying to get it absolutely perfect and not realize all that time had passed so and
00:18:54
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
00:19:00
from thinking about it but it's also the same thing that would keep me training on a single technique for hours on end
00:19:06
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
00:19:13
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
00:19:20
each side and like a sun with the cool glasses right my mom would be like what why do you keep drawing this picture
00:19:25
over and over thousands of times I would draw the same drawing and uh she said my answer was that I'm
00:19:32
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
00:19:37
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
00:19:42
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
00:19:49
I can't really control for For Better or For Worse and is that perfectionism is that how You' kind of Define that this
00:19:56
sort of obsessive um pursuit of making the thing perfect as
00:20:01
you see it I don't think it's so much perfectionism as it is Mastery I want to like master and understand something
00:20:07
completely it's kind of like an unfinished puzzle you know cuz I can live in squalor like I
00:20:16
don't think like the perfectionism of everything around me is really uh um so so important but yeah being able to to
00:20:24
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
00:20:31
and train with big Jim at 16 years old you leave home at 16 years old and go
00:20:36
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
00:20:43
and off for like years I was up there um uh well Big Jim was one of the best
00:20:49
coaches in the country and he trained his son little Jimmy who had just won the 1999 World Championship as in Judo
00:20:57
and um I know Judo is not that big in the US so the places that are good at it
00:21:03
and have good coaches and good people to train with are few and far between and um Pedro's Judo was one of those
00:21:09
places yeah leaving home at 16 is um is unusual to say the least yeah what
00:21:17
impact did that have on you it was tough it was hard I remember being homesick a
00:21:23
lot um I was really isolating you know I uh all I did was train all day there
00:21:28
wasn't any other kids my age I was always around people older than me um you know part of being like a sport
00:21:35
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
00:21:41
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
00:21:47
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
00:21:55
and at this time you're 16 you're you have your first experience with what we call
00:22:01
bulimia you talk about this in the book where because of the pressure for to make way almost every week you struggled
00:22:09
with bulimia for the first time can you what do I need to understand about that because I I don't understand what bimar
00:22:15
is in my in Full full entirety but I also don't understand the circumstances that would lead a 16-year-old to make
00:22:24
decisions to that would be categorized as Bic um well basically I had to be await on a
00:22:32
deadline very often and it's not really a weight that I could healthily stay at
00:22:41
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
00:22:47
with food where I would like hoard food while I was cutting weight like candy
00:22:52
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
00:22:59
have any um resources to help me out with it and so uh it just kind of spiraled into a
00:23:05
disorder and that sort of would mean um throwing up your food after you to eaten it on occasion
00:23:12
MH yep I remember the first time I did it was uh I had like a childhood coach
00:23:18
or something took me out one day and he like basically like forced me to have a
00:23:24
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
00:23:30
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
00:23:36
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
00:23:42
I made myself throw up the chocolate shake and it was actually like it was it
00:23:48
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
00:23:55
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
00:24:00
it just became like you know the panic button of if I ate too much and I had a
00:24:05
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
00:24:13
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
00:24:22
but you have all this outside pressure to be able to maintain the the same way
00:24:27
even though as an athlete you're growing and putting on muscle and even getting taller so it was kind of like fighting
00:24:32
nature I read in your book that they called you missman yeah in school it wasn't cool
00:24:39
for you know little girls to be muscular back then and so uh before I dropped out
00:24:44
at 16 you know I uh I was really muscular and um people
00:24:51
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
00:24:56
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
00:25:03
one reason why when I got older that trying to like fight that that uh idea
00:25:09
that being muscular or was masculine was something that became important to me because that you know if you were a
00:25:16
teenage girl in the early 2000s it was a a pretty unhealthy standard that was presented to us so
00:25:23
yeah I uh I didn't fit the the very narrow scope of what was considered attractive at that that time and um and
00:25:30
now it's like considered like really cool for you know women to have muscles now all the model models have like
00:25:37
stomach definition and stuff like that and like are doing boxing and all this stuff and want to look toned but um that
00:25:43
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
00:25:49
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
00:25:55
control over your life um and I think you on route to the Olympics at this
00:26:00
point you were thinking about going to the Olympics at 21 years old you actually competed in the Beijing
00:26:06
Olympics and were the first American women to get an Olympic medal and then what I found really
00:26:12
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
00:26:20
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
00:26:27
still you would only get $110,000 is there like a bit of a through line in your story that starts
00:26:32
very young about this idea of um the importance of validation and respect
00:26:37
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
00:26:44
something that drove me and then it ended up being something that held me back that I had to kind of shake myself
00:26:50
from but you know I also benefited greatly from it so I'm not saying I regret anything but I know that it
00:26:56
wasn't like a sustainable model for for me to you know be happy in the long run
00:27:01
CU I spoke to Tim Grover who trained LeBron and um Kobe and he said the same
00:27:06
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
00:27:11
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
00:27:18
things about us the things that we would probably keep in the shadow if we could um they end up creating the greatness
00:27:24
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
00:27:31
makes the case to me that we all have a dark side and unfortunately it's it as I
00:27:36
say it's responsible for our light side I I see that throughout your story this sort of Journey to understanding that
00:27:41
part of you and as you say in your book like liberating yourself from it um
00:27:46
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
00:27:51
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
00:27:57
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
00:28:05
to get to the top of several mountains to realize that like the mountain
00:28:11
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
00:28:17
achievements that somehow well someday they would all add up to happiness that I would be able to like I did this thing
00:28:24
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
00:28:31
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
00:28:37
and it would make me happy for a time but your life goes on past that and so I
00:28:42
kind of had to um figure out after hoarding all these bucket list
00:28:48
experiences that um that I would actually end up just forgetting at times
00:28:54
like someone had to remind me the other day remember when you flew with the Thunderbirds I'm like oh yeah
00:28:59
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
00:29:06
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
00:29:13
kind of figure out that like making myself happy with every day that I'm wi that that I'm living individually is
00:29:19
what I needed to do and there's no amount of accomplishments that you can like add to you know your your trophy
00:29:26
shelf that are going to acquaint to being happy forever in the future it just it just is impossible and it sounds
00:29:32
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
00:29:39
appeared to be a bit of a concussion based brain injury of sorts because in your book you talk about how you realize
00:29:45
that in inspiring if someone hit you pretty hard in the head you'd end up seeing
00:29:50
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
00:29:59
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
00:30:05
then' be like just stop being a [ __ ] and like keep training and so um I would
00:30:11
get you know dozens and dozens of concussions and never be allowed to stop
00:30:17
and I would have to keep training through them and the symptoms would persist for weeks so the point that I
00:30:24
was experiencing concussion symptoms more often than I wasn't for 10year Judo
00:30:29
career I mean that's the kind of thing that like you know leads to CTE all
00:30:35
these football players that we we're dealing with were having concussions repeatedly and not being allowed to rest
00:30:43
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
00:30:51
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
00:31:01
um it was really easy for me to to get concussion symptoms and um i' I'd rested
00:31:08
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
00:31:14
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
00:31:20
sparring that went into that training camp and you're wearing like a headgear and gloves which are meant to protect
00:31:26
you cosmetically but these gloves are 14 ounces and you're wearing this head gear so your brain is you know suspended in
00:31:32
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
00:31:40
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
00:31:46
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
00:31:52
just have to be perfect and not allow these people to touch me I have to create this fighting style that's so efficient
00:31:58
that I don't take any damage and um it got to a point where I fought Sarah
00:32:04
McMahon and she barely tapped me and I obviously had a concussion afterward I couldn't bear to look at the lights I
00:32:10
had to have everyone turn the lights off and um I was looking for a way out you know
00:32:17
cuz I know I couldn't sustain that forever um but yeah it's got to it got
00:32:23
to the point where if I got like tapped at all um with the you know said the
00:32:29
point say Stephanie McMahon slapped me and gave me a concussion you know and uh
00:32:34
the you know a woman then that has never been a fighter in
00:32:40
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
00:32:46
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
00:32:53
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
00:32:59
forever and so that like I think was the most frustrating thing to me that like in
00:33:05
my uh my first loss I got tapped in the beginning and I'd fallen down the stairs
00:33:12
a week or so like maybe a week or so before that knocked myself out falling
00:33:17
down the stairs at my house and then didn't say anything went into the fight anyway had a horrible weight cut had the
00:33:23
wrong mouth guard with that which didn't have the protection on the back of the bottom teeth
00:33:28
so the first time she Taps me my teeth get knocked loose and I'm out on my feet
00:33:34
like when I say out on my feet it means that like like I have no I have no depth
00:33:40
depth perception basically and I'm at a very limited capacity of what my brain
00:33:45
can um the information that it could give me and so I knew that if she knew that I
00:33:54
was hurt I wouldn't be able to defend myself and so I had to keep coming forward without knowing how far
00:34:00
away she was and not being fully you know hold of my facilities just to keep
00:34:07
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
00:34:13
that really dug like dug at me for so long that so many people were like saying like oh Rhonda's game plan was
00:34:20
bad or whatever this and like they didn't know that like I wasn't like
00:34:26
present I I was like just trying to survive I couldn't see how far away she was I
00:34:32
um it wasn't like that was my game plan or anything like that I was like completely disabled and uh when I tried
00:34:41
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
00:34:46
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
00:34:53
out on my feet I was out so I just like just didn't have the
00:34:59
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'
00:35:06
never had been more skilled as a fighter I'd never been better in my life but I just you know I just neurologically
00:35:14
wasn't capable of continuing it to fight at that level and I couldn't say anything about it then because I wanted
00:35:19
to go and do pro wrestling and they already have their own controversy that they had to deal with with uh wrestlers
00:35:26
having you know CTE all kinds of damage from concussions and so it's such a volatile subject that I
00:35:32
just I couldn't say anything about it and I couldn't say anything about it leading into my my my last fight because
00:35:40
then I'd be basically telling the other person that um you know the putting a
00:35:45
Target on my head literally so I just had to stay silent about it for years and let people make their their own
00:35:52
assumptions about me and um you know it was it was tough because like
00:35:58
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
00:36:03
never been faster stronger everything else but you know you only have so many hits that you can take and unfortunately
00:36:10
I took the vast majority of them as a kid doing Judo I want to make sure I completely
00:36:16
understand the context of the what it's like to get a concussion and to live with a concussion that ends up
00:36:21
compounding to make it even more sensitive you you you take those big hits when you're younger they they ask
00:36:27
you to fight through the concussion by the time you're in the UFC you've developed this incredible style where
00:36:33
you basically get people out of there instantly I mean in the leading up to your fight with Amanda Holmes I think I
00:36:39
remember the commentator saying at the time that you'd knocked or you'd submitted everyone within sort of 30
00:36:45
seconds of the fight starting so your your style had kind of adapted to become I'm going to get this person out of
00:36:50
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
00:36:56
to finish the person off immediately because that was the only way that I could fight is to not take any damage
00:37:02
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
00:37:09
weren't no were any of your coaches aware of it no was Edmund aware of it
00:37:16
yourbody I didn't tell anybody I didn't it was one of those things I just didn't
00:37:21
want to like face up to that to having any
00:37:26
weakness in myself and also like like Edan would have made me stop I didn't
00:37:31
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
00:37:37
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
00:37:43
hands in your book you talk about the relationship you had with Edmund and it wasn't always great in terms of his
00:37:51
approach to coaching you talk about how he would physically strike you during training but more potentially even more
00:37:57
he would emotionally abuse you during training I mean
00:38:03
honestly I can't think of single coach
00:38:08
that I had like a great like a like a great relationship with like this is
00:38:15
like a lot of the coaches were of that like Bella Cori kind of generation of
00:38:22
like they thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best result and that was kind of what was
00:38:29
like in Vogue at the time so um and like that as an athlete you're
00:38:36
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
00:38:44
these these Sports where you have no other choice like this is the national
00:38:49
team coach and you have to get their approval and put up their [ __ ] to be able to to fight at this level and so
00:38:56
like Edmund was I think not as bad as previous
00:39:03
coaches so that's why I um put up with a lot cuz I felt like I at least had a say
00:39:09
that I could I could talk back the other coaches would just you know um like
00:39:16
little Jimmy my first coach literally like dislocated my jaw as I was a little kid I threw him once in front of
00:39:21
everybody and and laughed because I thought it was awesome and he threw me on the benches on top of the table at
00:39:26
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
00:39:32
drive his point home that women can't defend themselves and so this is like behavior that I've been conditioned to
00:39:38
tolerate since I was like a little girl and um Edmund was of that same like
00:39:46
Eastern European kind of like school of thought of like you have to be like really tough and in order to bring the
00:39:53
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
00:39:59
us are developing our emotions you're having yours suppressed and you're being made into this really quote unquote
00:40:06
tough person I think it kind of taught me from a young age to just
00:40:12
like how to diffuse like coaches that were like getting out of hand and to not
00:40:20
because if I st stood up for myself it would just make it worse and so it just
00:40:25
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
00:40:30
butter them up or I have to like strategically find my way to like out out of being bered or something like
00:40:37
that and so um I think it's not so much one individual that's a huge problem I
00:40:44
think like the whole system is the problem and that it really reinforces these like in these power IM balances
00:40:52
that are um inevitably taken advantage of that all these coaches have free
00:40:57
reign of their little their little foms and um a lot of these athletes don't have
00:41:04
any other option and so like I don't see how like in school you can have like a
00:41:11
teacher someone comes in to watch the teacher teach to grade them on their teaching like nobody does this for
00:41:17
coaching and you know so I would hear these stories about like these Sumo coaches that like would kill their
00:41:22
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
00:41:29
person it's not one sport it's everywhere and there's
00:41:34
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
00:41:41
like unhealthy power like in inbalance that what I was
00:41:47
able how I was able to take my relationship with my coach Edmund and
00:41:53
take it from off the rails back on track is to to have very distinct boundaries
00:41:59
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
00:42:06
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
00:42:14
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
00:42:20
want to have to be my mom and my coach because being both of those at the same time is inevitably
00:42:25
unhealthy and when we put boundaries in place of like
00:42:31
okay this is what your job is and you do not do anything outside of that
00:42:36
then you know I training was better than ever our relationship was better than ever but I think like a lot of these
00:42:42
lines and these boundaries get blurred and they need to be very you know very
00:42:48
defined in order for for it to work out and how were those Lines Blurred with
00:42:54
your coach um just just he was crossing them in terms of the things he was able to say and do yeah I
00:43:02
mean a lot of it was like he just wanted to know where I was all the time and um
00:43:08
like I needed to be constantly available and and stuff like that and uh or else
00:43:13
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
00:43:18
do anything I could to not get in an argument and um but yeah like I had to like make a
00:43:26
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
00:43:32
like it's my [ __ ] business it's my privacy and it was just he was always trying to push that
00:43:37
boundary um now was always pushing back and stuff like that and um but I was
00:43:43
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
00:43:50
plate him because if I like just stopped talking to him and an argument then it
00:43:56
would end up leaking into training the next day and so it just became like really like taxing of like my my energy
00:44:03
in general but like I mean I can't really think of a single like coach relationship that I that I had that was
00:44:10
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
00:44:16
working I'm getting better and so you would just put up with it because there's there was no perfect option out
00:44:23
there you said at the very start that you were very very close to your father and then when your father the past these
00:44:28
other men that almost take on what someone could like into a fatherly role are all
00:44:33
coaches yeah yeah no I mean they were all like uh what was it in in Kill Bill
00:44:39
that was talking about uh that bill lost his father early so he collected father figures yeah I collected them um none of
00:44:48
them were as good as the original but yeah I think that that constant need for you know um validation
00:44:56
from a father fig it was something that I was constantly like pursuing but um you know that like that philosophy of
00:45:04
coaching of you know you see like the like the Russian figure skaters the gymnast that never
00:45:10
smile because they've been like beaten into iron that was basically the philosophy of all the coaches that I had
00:45:16
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
00:45:21
emulate that beating the emotion out of you this is something that I that I've always wondered about you because you
00:45:28
you've always had a Steely um exterior you know no you have especially
00:45:34
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
00:45:40
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
00:45:47
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
00:45:53
lacking discipline if you miss weight and all of these kinds of things um you go through that the loss of your
00:45:59
father the unprocessed grief I'm wondering what happens to Ronda Rousey's relationship with her own emotions I
00:46:05
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
00:46:11
on the mat like every practice for years straight and I would get yelled at for crying you get yelled at for crying I
00:46:16
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
00:46:25
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
00:46:31
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
00:46:38
it was full double elimination so I ended up winning the tournament but I lost a match earlier in the day and
00:46:43
every single match I would come out crying bow in throw the other girl on her ass beat her bow out crying come
00:46:50
into the next match still crying beat the [ __ ] out of the other girl B out crying the whole day crying until I beat
00:46:56
everybody beat the same girl that beat me twice in order to win on top of the podium number one crying still because I
00:47:03
lost that first match earlier in the day and so yeah I was always very
00:47:08
emotional I was extremely emotional as a fighter and in training and everything like that and that was something I was
00:47:14
constantly trying to like battle was like if you get thrown in a tournament don't start crying because that was just
00:47:21
something that would happen to me all the time very yeah and that it's so funny people think that I'm like yeah
00:47:27
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
00:47:32
of a match wow yeah Dana says he's never going to allow women into the UFC to
00:47:38
fight but then Dana changes his mind and he changes his mind because of you
00:47:43
effectively so in September 2012 I remember the I remember it very fondly I remember where I was when I watched the
00:47:49
first um woman fight in the UFC Dana says that he's signing the first ever
00:47:54
woman fighter in the UFC lady called Ronda Rousey and despite saying a year earlier that he wouldn't but he called
00:48:01
you a game changer and so you did end up changing the game and you became UFC
00:48:06
champion between 2022 and 2015 you won 15 fights back to back most
00:48:13
of them finished within seconds you stacked up a bunch of records including the fastest ever win fastest submission
00:48:19
fastest title defense turnaround and you were voted the best female athlete of all time in a 2015 PN
00:48:27
fan pole and Fox Sports called you one of the defining athletes of the 21st
00:48:34
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
00:48:41
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
00:48:47
anyone in the UFC I mean there's Fighters today that seem to just fight once a year why were you doing that why
00:48:53
were you fighting so frequently I was fighting that frequently because that's how often Dana called and I told him
00:48:59
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
00:49:05
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
00:49:13
if there was like a I always fought on like uh Fe like februaries and augusts
00:49:19
and November like the worst times of the years is to fight because that's when they needed somebody to come in and pick
00:49:24
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
00:49:31
which are the best you know viewer um the highest view of the year I um I
00:49:37
would do whatever was best for the company because that's what I promised the role that I would fulfill that was
00:49:42
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
00:49:50
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
00:49:56
advice on that day when you signed your UFC contract now you could time travel
00:50:01
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
00:50:07
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
00:50:14
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
00:50:23
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
00:50:29
know and they were just starting to find out and throughout that period while you were the UFC champion you take up acting
00:50:36
and you you feature in a couple of films like the Fast and Furious The Expendables Etc was that something that
00:50:41
you always had planned or is that something that just arose as an opportunity uh the movie stuff just kind
00:50:46
of arose as an opportunity um but you know once it became a possibility I was
00:50:53
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
00:51:01
like performer and you know great physical performer as well and I could
00:51:07
combine the two in a way that nobody else could so I went after it with the same kind of confidence I went after
00:51:13
everything on the 14th of November 2015 you had UFC 193 where you were lined up
00:51:19
to fight Holly Holmes in Melbourne Australia I remember where I was when that fight happened I I didn't miss many
00:51:24
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
00:51:31
you were indestructible basically that's how the whole UFC community and I think the fan
00:51:37
base saw you but in that moment as you said earlier on there was an initial contact and I watched the clip again
00:51:42
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
00:51:48
correctly and then you talked about having this sort of issue with dep death percept depth perception because of that
00:51:54
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
00:52:02
with kind of understanding where where um Holly is and that fight ends in a
00:52:07
head kick from that moment when you leave the O the
00:52:12
Octagon how does how does your life and perception of everything change because it's interesting the way that you were
00:52:18
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
00:52:25
fundamentally indestructible you know and that's kind of what the marketing machine does it does to
00:52:30
everyone they're fundamentally indestructible but to everyone with from mamad Ali to my friend Israel um in the
00:52:37
UFC everyone has their day where we find out that everyone is a human being to some degree from the moment you leave
00:52:42
the UFC what is life like from that point onwards when you get back into the medical
00:52:47
room um extremely depressing you know that was my whole identity was uh uh being champion and
00:52:56
defeated and um it's just like Soul crushing really was it was I was just
00:53:04
kind of like forced to face music before I was ready to and I knew that
00:53:14
um it was going to catch up to me at some point but I was
00:53:19
more think upset that there were so many people out there that were like reveling in it and um
00:53:31
and I don't know it just felt so like unjust in a way because I just felt like it was
00:53:36
just there's so much of it it just wasn't my fault you know I just couldn't
00:53:41
like my brain just couldn't take what I asked of it anymore and my body took as
00:53:48
much as it could until it literally broke and I gave everybody everything that I had and
00:53:55
um and that wasn't enough for them they they hated me for not having
00:54:01
more so I mean it was tough it was um I saw a whole bunch of people that I
00:54:06
thought were friends just you know turn on me and
00:54:11
um it was uh really eye opening in a way though you know
00:54:17
to who TR who had CH who to who true friends are and what is what true
00:54:23
happiness is and that outward validation wasn't it and so I think maybe he might have saved
00:54:28
me in a way from going down the path of trying to like chase that high of everybody's you know approval
00:54:34
forever but um so I guess it was liberating in a way in the long run if I
00:54:39
was a fly on the wall that night when you left that octagon what would I have seen a lot of
00:54:46
crying you know um I had to get my lip sewed up the
00:54:54
muscle underneath and then the the skin I remember I was so out of it that
00:54:59
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
00:55:07
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
00:55:14
judging me for the decisions I was making while while in that state I think is what bothered me the most it wasn't
00:55:20
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
00:55:28
full capacity I don't think anyone could ever beat me but I just you know I was
00:55:34
spent I I was running on fumes for so long that I didn't have any fumes left
00:55:40
and um and the moment that I ran out of fumes was um you know broadcast live to
00:55:47
billions of people everywhere who all had their own assumptions about it and none of them are right and I felt like I
00:55:53
couldn't speak up or say anything and on honestly like whoever I tried to talk to
00:56:00
they didn't care about um helping me communicate what I
00:56:05
was trying to communicate they just cared about getting as many clicks as possible so I couldn't trust anyone to
00:56:11
speak through so I feel like this book was the only way that I could really communicate everything that I'd been
00:56:17
holding on to for years because I mean yeah it was really tough but I
00:56:23
literally fought until I couldn't fight anymore and maybe that's not enough for a lot of
00:56:28
people but I feel like I created the most efficient fighting style that ever created that that was that's ever
00:56:36
existed and um I had to realize that only people that are truly great can
00:56:42
recognize greatness I wanted to be so great that only that even an idiot couldn't um deny it but
00:56:51
um but then I realized after going into pro wrestling that retiring undefeated
00:56:56
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
00:57:02
than all these girls and by [ __ ] long shot and I always will
00:57:08
be taking my Equity away from me so that everybody is knows that wouldn't would
00:57:15
actually tarnish my legacy it wouldn't make everybody take the the women after me seriously and so it it had to happen
00:57:23
for the for you know the the betterment of the sport but you know sometimes it
00:57:30
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
00:57:37
mom said all the time really quick you have this picture here that she didn't care if everybody knew she was the best
00:57:44
in the world she only cared if she knew she didn't care if that nobody knew who
00:57:49
was the first American world champion of Judo back in 1984 it was important to her and um
00:57:56
I think like somewhere along the way um I it started to matter more what other
00:58:02
people thought than what I thought and so um I think being being forced back to
00:58:10
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
00:58:17
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
00:58:23
Playstation but I don't think they understand the extent of the devastation
00:58:28
on a human level that you kind of experience after that loss and I think until you did that interview with Ellen
00:58:34
where you revealed that you'd gone back to your changing room and you had the sort of this sort of suicidal ideation
00:58:40
about the future most people didn't realize the extent of it until then did you
00:58:46
literally have suicidal ideation in the days and hours following
00:58:51
the fight no it was basically like instantly when I came backstage
00:58:57
uh but you know um suicide is the kind of thing that
00:59:02
becomes more prevalent if you know it's in your family and I've literally had
00:59:10
two generations of suicide ahead of me it's just something that um it's always
00:59:15
a like a an option in your mind once it's shown to you you
00:59:20
know um but I think that the fact that I was with Trav then my husband now
00:59:28
that I just didn't want to like take the pain that I had in me and give it to him
00:59:34
because that's what how I experienced suicide was like okay it's you get to relieve yourself of that pain but you
00:59:41
have to you passed on to everybody else and um my my you know but my dad was
00:59:47
dying anyway he wouldn't have been able to prevent his his death and he was you know physically suffering every day and
00:59:54
so that so I understand that and um I didn't feel like I had that same kind of justification that I wasn't
01:00:01
going to die anyway so um I was going going to live for him and for my family
01:00:08
so that they wouldn't have to to to take the pain that I was feeling onto
01:00:14
them was that the hardest moment in your professional career professionally
01:00:20
yeah was it the hardest moment in your personal life no losing my dad was
01:00:27
course you went on to fight Amanda Nunes as at UFC 207 in 2016 and the the fight
01:00:35
um ends again and after this you come to the decision that your time at the UFC
01:00:41
is over and you decide to to move on to the WWE there's a sort of a two-year Gap
01:00:47
I believe between about a one-year gap between the Nunes fight and the WWE announcement what happens in your life
01:00:52
in that Gap um I was mostly just being sad I was just like sad and high and
01:00:58
playing video games and eating Crepes I mean everybody wants to rush you through grieving things but you know
01:01:06
I think it's important and so I took that time to myself I was also just so
01:01:11
worn out from you know like I said Running on Fumes for years on end and
01:01:17
like literally dragging myself out of bed every morning and like having to dig deep every second of the day that I just
01:01:24
you know wanted to dig deep and just disappear I had you know Paparazzi and
01:01:31
all kinds of crazy [ __ ] happening at the time and I just just like didn't want to be famous
01:01:39
anymore so um it was always more of a tool than a goal and now that I didn't have fights
01:01:44
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
01:01:52
to be left alone were you doing anything professionally during that period we just at home um I mean I
01:02:02
um oh just at home I feel like I just needed to
01:02:07
not give anymore I don't think anyone can
01:02:13
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
01:02:20
mentally and physically rest and um but people of you know dug
01:02:27
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
01:02:33
much effort that takes and um just sounds like numbers when you say it but
01:02:38
when you live it it's just like I literally had nothing left in me I could barely get out of bed so I
01:02:47
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
01:02:55
like the kind attire that takes like a year to recover from is that is that depression in your yes so you could you
01:03:02
could call it depression um but you know I I didn't
01:03:08
see anyone get diagnosed your your husband was there throughout that period with you yeah he
01:03:14
was there the whole time he was the one supplying the Crepes yeah he's amazing he he really
01:03:22
was you know helped drag me out of my own hole and I'm very much like you know like a
01:03:28
Gollum cave creature in general like I just will like not not leave my my little Den um
01:03:37
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
01:03:44
no which you know it's always kind of been how I was I I always struggled
01:03:49
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
01:03:55
and communicate and so um I just kind of reverted back to like my my hermit
01:04:02
Tendencies and yeah Trav literally had to like drag me out of my hole and um
01:04:07
I'm glad you did but um yeah I would easily SL slide back into the Misty
01:04:13
Mountains anytime I was allowed did he understand what you were going through psychologically in that period were you
01:04:18
able to communicate it Tim um I think he understood to an extent like he uh he
01:04:24
had a different kind of incredible story where he started fighting at 26 and then
01:04:29
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
01:04:36
so he was like incredibly naturally talented but he hadn't been you know
01:04:42
um pursuing a goal of athletic greatness since he was six the way that I had and
01:04:48
so um just the disappointment of you know never going never winning an
01:04:53
Olympic gold medal and never being able to retire undefeated and those kind of like lifelong goals um I don't think a
01:05:02
lot of people understand that but he also was still like so supportive and there for me you know and he never got
01:05:08
fed up with me moping around and literally crying over like eggs if I like know broke the Yol and be like I
01:05:15
can't even make you eggs you know and like just being like that for like yeah
01:05:21
over a year and stuff and his like he's just such incredible love patience it
01:05:27
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
01:05:33
understand why I was so sad he was like there for it anyway so yeah he's the
01:05:40
best thing that ever happened to me I love him so much but yeah he might not have
01:05:45
understood it so much but he was still there for
01:05:50
me you knew you're going to get me at some point I told you I'm emotional no I
01:05:58
no it's often in those moments um our hardest moments that we realize as you said earlier who we've
01:06:04
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
01:06:11
realized who really really mattered and my partner in particular through my hardest moments I've you go through the
01:06:17
the Dark Canyon of these tough times in life and you emerg that person walked through it with you and you go [ __ ]
01:06:23
hell this person now I understand how much they mean to me sometimes it takes that to understand what someone means to
01:06:29
you um and it certainly sounds like that moment crystallized what Travis means to
01:06:35
you in your life as well yeah I think when we first got together we went
01:06:40
through so much stuff that would have driven anybody else apart but it really just brought us all brought us brought
01:06:46
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
01:06:52
through it alone what is the WWE come in so that's ultimately what sort of I guess pulled
01:06:59
you out of your little cave there but yeah I I had to get out of the cave and
01:07:04
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
01:07:12
don't like being in front of crowds and a bunch of people and I hate public
01:07:18
speaking but I just love the stuff that I get to do while doing it you
01:07:23
know um but yeah I like kind of my friends uh the the four hseen Shea
01:07:30
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
01:07:37
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
01:07:43
to like socialize and make friends like these were like my girls you know and they all started getting into pro
01:07:49
wrestling and um I just started doing it for fun and it was just so fun and like
01:07:56
it wasn't a competition it was everyone working together to try and do something great together and so it reminded me
01:08:02
more of like you know like filming action movies and doing fight choreography except for it was kind of
01:08:08
like in its purest form where you have to tell the story like the movie you have like the movie part and then
01:08:14
there's a fight and then the story and like usually the fight is like separate from that and I feel like pro wrestling
01:08:20
is like the the purest form of combat storytelling because you can only tell the story through the com that I was
01:08:26
just fascinated with that especially you know want to be Bruce Lee and um and it
01:08:32
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
01:08:40
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
01:08:46
that feeling of being lost in something uh told my friend I was telling somebody
01:08:51
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
01:08:59
and I just love being in it and um so um yeah then I started just training for
01:09:05
fun and then um then uh ended up you know getting I
01:09:12
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
01:09:21
yeah then just kind of snowballed into cuz at first I was like okay I want to have a baby soon
01:09:28
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
01:09:34
just kind of like snowballed into this whole beast and this whole like other life that I didn't know that um I was
01:09:41
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
01:09:48
time if you had a business idea it was exceptionally difficult to get going but now in the age of Shopify it is
01:09:57
exceptionally easy as many of you will know Shopify are a sponsor of this podcast if you don't know Shopify it's
01:10:03
an exceptionally simple web platform for anybody that's got an idea that wants to transact on a global scale so things
01:10:10
like these conversation cards which we sell we've sold using Shopify and it only took us a couple of clicks to get
01:10:17
going so why did we choose Shopify for a number of reasons but I think one of the big ones which goes unappreciated is
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their checkout system converts 36% better compared to other platforms and
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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
01:10:34
try Shopify for $1 a month I've seen Shopify completely
01:10:39
change people's lives and for many of you I think it could change yours one of the things that surpris
01:10:46
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
01:10:52
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
01:10:57
conferences the bravado is in your book you talk about how comments online and
01:11:03
com newspaper comments and stuff would get to you I mean you know starts off like
01:11:11
that but yeah um at first you know um
01:11:17
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
01:11:23
at my tag photos and it's so unhealthy but um but after my first loss
01:11:31
I quit cold turkeying which I feel like that was one thing that I needed to do
01:11:36
was to like not constantly need that um outside validation and stuff like that
01:11:42
especially from the internet and social media and stuff and I was kind of like spiraling in a way and and kind of like
01:11:51
giving that way too much stock in my like emotional you know State and stuff stuff like that and um and then pro
01:11:58
wrestling you're literally in front of a a crowd that is like the embodiment of a
01:12:03
comment section in front of yourself um but um you know that's also
01:12:10
why I really uh enjoyed being a heel which I you know wish they would have
01:12:15
let me be a heel more often because um that's why I feel like I was happy
01:12:21
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
01:12:28
and not trying to um constantly you know um Pander I was surprised to hear about
01:12:35
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
01:12:40
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
01:12:48
wow yeah yeah it and it's so needlessly dangerous like no one can is like a lot
01:12:55
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
01:13:01
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
01:13:07
we're all Expendable to them did you feel Expendable to the UFC to the WWE
01:13:12
yes yeah I think you all we all did and they they made sure to make us feel that
01:13:19
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
01:13:26
that you would just do whatever you're told yeah just do whatever you're told just take it and you're all contractors
01:13:31
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
01:13:38
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
01:13:46
Kingdom yeah well I mean supposedly he's out now
01:13:52
because they you know caught him paying py company funds so he can show on some
01:13:57
girls head in the office and you know do a threesome with her Johnny laurenitis but um his cronies are still there and
01:14:04
so when that stuff started coming out and Vince was gone before he was still
01:14:11
basically just calling it in and running the company and um but yeah like Bruce
01:14:16
Pritchard who's there now who's still like the head of creative or whatever title they gave him um is basically just
01:14:24
taking orders from Vince and still running the company through him and so
01:14:29
when Vince was uh uh resigned formally because of all
01:14:35
these like sexual allegations and stuff that were coming out um he was still running the company informally and I
01:14:41
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
01:14:48
the girls in locker room I absolutely love them the people at the top running yeah I mean Stephen Triple H I think
01:14:54
they're honest ly doing their best but I mean I think that Vince McMahon just created a fundamentally sick environment
01:15:00
and uh I think if if Ari is going to be able is going to be able if Ari Emanuel
01:15:06
who bought it out from WME is going to be able to actually make this multi-billion dollar dysfunctional
01:15:12
organization into one that functions he's got to clean out all of Vince's cronies he's got to completely clean
01:15:18
house and uh remove Vince's influence completely but um you know no one's
01:15:24
asking me but that's just what I experienced when Vince was gone he was still running the
01:15:30
show through um you know people that he'd hired in the past Bruce Pritchard
01:15:35
being number one of them Bruce pritchard's still there I believe yeah John laurenitis took like he he was uh
01:15:43
he was cut loose because he got named specifically in in the Scandal but uh
01:15:49
yeah Bruce pitchard is literally I'd never heard him say a single one of his own opinions he'd only said that Vince
01:15:55
says this Vince says that Vince says this Vince says this Vince Vince Vince Vince and so he's literally just like
01:16:00
you know I I called him Vince's Avatar that's basically what he is you returned
01:16:05
to the UFC after you left in 2019 um you were there till from 2017 to
01:16:12
2019 and um in 2017 you is when you got married with Travis I couldn't figure
01:16:19
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
01:16:28
something I'm trying now with my partner on that process as well and you talk in the book about a really heartbreaking
01:16:34
incident where you're filming a TV show with 911 the TV show 911 um and there was a a fight scenes
01:16:41
and various stunts in that movie and a day after that you suffered a
01:16:46
miscarriage yeah I um well I found out I was pregnant right before the show started filming and then I um my finger
01:16:54
got chopped off from a boat door falling on it and
01:17:00
um but you know the we got we went and checked out and there's you know the
01:17:05
baby seemed just fine uh but then I miscarried a couple weeks later so I
01:17:11
kind of always felt like that was my fault that I wanted to keep doing
01:17:16
dangerous stuff while I was pregnant because I thought it made me cool and then um and then I was just like depressed
01:17:23
and like drinking and smoking not taking care of myself and then got pregnant right away again and then we never even
01:17:29
saw a heartbeat that time but I wasn't expecting anything more cuz I just wasn't taken care of myself so you had
01:17:34
two miscarriages two miscarriages yeah and then I went through IVF four Cycles
01:17:40
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
01:17:48
actually worked that that's you know Thea my daughter now but
01:17:53
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
01:18:00
work so it's tough anyone going through is tough and like people just don't talk
01:18:06
about it but you know it's hard CU you have like so much hope every time
01:18:13
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
01:18:20
hoping to be pregnant today
01:18:25
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
01:18:31
it alone but um uh it's really really
01:18:39
common but it's just it's really hard when things don't work
01:18:46
out so many women and couples are going through this and as you as you say it's
01:18:51
not something we talk about because the mixture of feelings Sur in it are comp complex to say the least yeah I think
01:18:59
like you know no one wants to burden anybody else with what they're going through but a lot of times it's not
01:19:06
you're not burdening other people you're you
01:19:13
know I don't know if it's like camaraderie but you're offering something to to other people that are
01:19:18
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
01:19:26
know your Peak productive years are your Peak Athletic years so I I decided to
01:19:32
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
01:19:39
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
01:19:47
I got a lot more than than most than a lot of people that have been through it but you
01:19:53
know so you got three kids in total two of them are from Travis's previous relationship with his previous partner
01:20:00
where you're now the stepmother and you've had a daughter of your own yeah people don't understand the because
01:20:06
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
01:20:12
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
01:20:18
success failure etc for those people that have never experienced it what what is that like what the complexity of the
01:20:25
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
01:20:32
physically your body and um like like um this last cycle I wasn't
01:20:39
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
01:20:47
do like four Cycles in a row and then the transfer cycle I mean like I I was
01:20:53
like just not recognizing able physically and um and uh just mentally so worn out
01:21:00
you're on all these kind of hormones and you're going through this like emotional roller coaster and stuff and you just
01:21:05
you can't really talk about it you know and um and uh yeah sometimes
01:21:13
like like I would you know have just people that are like psychotic trolls
01:21:18
that like try and follow me around online and like braak me about these kind of things about like at the time
01:21:24
mind like not not having a a kid when I was trying and and stuff like that and
01:21:30
that's I guess the the way you have to live with being a public figure but and
01:21:35
you're not supposed to say anything about it because how dare you not be grateful for your good fortune but man
01:21:41
it um it it sucks when you're going through it and you feel like you know
01:21:46
the world is also still looking over your shoulder and you're not living up to you know your own expectations I
01:21:53
don't know um if there's a I don't know if there's a feminine
01:21:58
word for emasculating but is uh you know eminating it feels like if you if you
01:22:05
can't naturally have like a baby like I mean my doctor was like if you probably
01:22:10
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
01:22:17
have so many he was like you should get all your embryos now so when you're
01:22:22
older you can take your time and and do it and so it's just like yeah it's tough
01:22:29
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
01:22:36
kids and so know luckily you know science makes it so you can have both but it doesn't make it
01:22:42
easy this has been very front to mind for me because um because I'm trying now
01:22:48
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
01:22:54
and understand because you know I think people typically think that fertility is a a female thing but the fertilities do
01:23:00
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
01:23:06
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
01:23:13
you share that because lots of people are struggling and increasingly the IVF clinics I think I think of the top of my
01:23:18
head have grown 90% in popularity over the last couple of years and because we're having our careers are being
01:23:24
extended further and um a variety of other things but sperm counts are dropping testosterone levels are
01:23:29
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
01:23:36
go through twoe pregnancies that you know my my doctor told me it was probably because it wasn't because you
01:23:43
chopped your finger off it wasn't because if you were drinking or smoking like it was because there
01:23:48
were um genetically not conducive to life and so the great thing with IVF is
01:23:54
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
01:24:00
of like oh your baby has this kind of you know disorder Mal formality and have
01:24:05
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
01:24:10
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
01:24:16
so it's it's tough I mean science is amazing but um it is like a really
01:24:22
difficult process to go through what is your happiness from these days you've had a real sort of uh a pivot in terms
01:24:28
of where you look for happiness over the last couple of years yeah I mean my happiness is every day with my family
01:24:34
that's that's what it is and I'm so lucky that I get to be like you
01:24:40
know retired in my mid-30s and um be able to spend like all my time with my
01:24:47
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
01:24:56
get to just focus on them and um yeah I don't know just day to day I I just I
01:25:02
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
01:25:08
bills with this and so yeah I mean I'm not like only like only my my husand
01:25:14
only a wife and mom like I started uh uh writing as just a way to like kind of
01:25:19
help me from you know not fixating on like my myself or picking at myself and
01:25:24
got into like screenwriting and um which is just like a really great way
01:25:31
for if I'm having like just you know not like a destructive thought process or
01:25:37
something like that that I can like turn my mind into towards something creative and actually like make something out of
01:25:43
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
01:25:51
with this book and I've actually I'm working on my fourth script right now and my first
01:25:56
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
01:26:03
things not with the intention of like making millions of dollars or you know impressing a bunch of people but just
01:26:09
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
01:26:15
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
01:26:22
lots of scripts and make me a better writer and like learn like the Dark Art of like writing coverages which people
01:26:27
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
01:26:33
you're looking for and all these things and just kind of like learning these skills that I'm really fascinated in and
01:26:39
um that's just like validating in themselves you know and like and with
01:26:45
our Ranch and everything like that and raising our cows and like my favorite part is we took this land in Oregon that
01:26:52
was like completely degraded you know had been mismanaged for years there was more dirt than there was grass and to be
01:26:58
able to we're using regenerative practices with our wagu and our and our py to be able to like bring this land
01:27:04
back to life you know so that was like been more rewarding to me than reading a
01:27:09
whole morning of positive comments on a freaking picture is actually like going
01:27:15
out and like seeing this land become better and um like that kind of stuff is like really rewarding and I don't have
01:27:21
to worry about you know uh promoting it or what people will think of it or how
01:27:26
much money I'm making from it so yeah like I'm retired but I'm busy it must be
01:27:32
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
01:27:39
know I don't know one assumes that the ADR we always talk about this adrenaline rush that you get from fighting and
01:27:45
competing the opposite of that is a farm and Oregon I guess so but I mean I love
01:27:51
my favorite crowds to like wrestle in front of are like small crowds I love being like in a small non-televised
01:27:58
crowd that's my favorite and like fight I could fight in a closet I could fight
01:28:04
in Arena it's not making it better to me you know I just want to win the fight
01:28:09
like the fight itself is what I care about that's what gave me the joy I was completely blocking them out I mean
01:28:14
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
01:28:22
of the fight itself I mean winning and everyone being like w i mean that's an incredible feeling that's great but um
01:28:28
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
01:28:34
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
01:28:41
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
01:28:48
of go going from knowing nothing about something to mastering it I love the process of Mastery you you used the word
01:28:54
earlier on self-destructive thoughts am I right in thinking that your self-destructive thoughts which appear
01:29:00
to still be with you today are the reason in part why you you were so great
01:29:06
when it came to the UFC and fighting yeah I guess like you know enter that
01:29:11
that flow State I guess of being like so um lost in doing something that you
01:29:17
can't think of anything else everything else just appears like that was always my favorite place to be you know in
01:29:24
swimming I didn't have that your mind was left to wander while you're swimming or in Judo you know there's nothing
01:29:30
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
01:29:36
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
01:29:44
being completely lost in the in the task of doing something the best that you can like that's something that's addicting
01:29:50
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
01:30:00
uh I guess it's just U where my where my happy place is but you know do you still
01:30:07
have those self-destructive thoughts today oh yeah I mean all the time but I mean it's just kind of like something
01:30:12
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
01:30:18
stupid [ __ ] like you know like just things that like come up that you can't do anything about it
01:30:24
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
01:30:31
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
01:30:36
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
01:30:42
therapy at any point in your career I mean I've tried but I'm you
01:30:48
know my mom's a psychologist so you know uh anyone that I went to talk too I was
01:30:54
just kind of like you're not as smart as my mom yeah but I I tempted but I've never
01:31:02
found anyone that I really like clicked with but I've given it a couple shots
01:31:07
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
01:31:12
doing my research is this beautiful picture here and the question I have for you is about the lessons you learned
01:31:19
from this man oh I'm going to keep this you can
01:31:26
keep both of them ah lessons I learned you know I wish I remembered
01:31:32
more we don't even have video or anything you know very few
01:31:38
pictures um but I don't know
01:31:43
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
01:31:50
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
01:32:00
e yeah I know but um he was like so in
01:32:05
love with my mom and she was so in love with him and um I think that's why I was
01:32:11
smart enough to wait until Trav to get married because I knew what I was looking for and so he showed me what a
01:32:18
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
01:32:26
developmentally and all these things my mom said he was the one that was always like you know Ronnie's as sleeper she's
01:32:32
going to show everybody and so he was always the one that like believed that I was going to be like exceptional and put
01:32:39
that belief in my mind that I am exceptional and I'm going to do incredible things and so yeah so didn't
01:32:47
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
01:32:54
Ronald John Rousey Jr but I'm a girl so I'm Ronda Jee Rousey the
01:33:01
first not the last and you did show everyone that's exactly what you did in your career you
01:33:07
showed everyone and um you know it's funny because I I'm a big UFC fan so I
01:33:12
watched your career enjoyed it so much you gave me some incredible moments throughout all of the the sort of those
01:33:18
major fights that you had and it's interesting because from reading your book and speaking to you today I
01:33:24
realized the very human cost of the entertainment that I enjoyed as a fan I behind that sat someone who is quite
01:33:32
clearly pretty obsessed with winning being Mastery in your own words and
01:33:37
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
01:33:42
cost as fans we just get to enjoy the entertainment and so it's very easy I think without the full picture being
01:33:48
illuminated to not pay tribute to someone who gave us so much fans but in
01:33:55
behind the scenes had to struggle in really profound ways from the age of 6 years old um for that joy that you
01:34:03
brought to all of our lives so on behalf of fans that do understand the full piture i' personally want to say thank
01:34:08
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
01:34:14
fight because you were like nothing I'd ever seen you know you defined the division you you basically created the
01:34:21
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
01:34:27
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
01:34:32
moments how difficult it still is but that's what I would expect from someone who is one of the real goats of the
01:34:39
sport thank you for writing this book as well it's um incredibly honest and I
01:34:44
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
01:34:50
on all of these experiences with a certain retrospect Ive Clarity and wisdom that is incredibly helpful and
01:34:58
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
01:35:06
the WWE and the UFC and from that perspective I think everyone can learn a tremendous amount about life about
01:35:13
happiness about family about committing yourselves to Something in the way in with the form of Mastery that you had um
01:35:20
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
01:35:27
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
01:35:33
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
01:35:38
don't know okay interesting fear the unknown it's not it's not it's not terrifying sometimes they're horrific um
01:35:46
what was the most fun moment of your entire life of my entire life yeah most
01:35:52
fun God I mean I've had a lot of
01:35:57
[Laughter] fun um they're probably intimate moments with my husband that I can't
01:36:04
share but we have a good time he'll be happy for the shout out I
01:36:12
think that's what matters Ronda Rousey AR fight out
01:36:17
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
01:36:24
[Music]
01:36:47
oh
