It may have taken a year or two, but former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) women’s Bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has finally opened up about her back-to-back knockout defeats to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes.
You can blame the media for her silence.
Indeed, over the last few months “Rowdy” has slowly been breaking out of her shell to talk about her MMA past, as well as her WWE future. During a recent Q &A inside Wild Card West boxing gym, Ronda explained how she dealt with the losses.
“I did a whole lot of crying, isolating myself, (husband Travis Browne) held me and let me cry and it lasted two years,” Rousey said via MMA Junkie. “I couldn’t have done it alone. There’s a lot of things you have to remember. Every missed opportunity is a blessing in disguise. I had to learn from experience. From the worst things, the best things have come as a result. Time is a great teacher. It’s that belief that time passes, even bad times.”
Indeed, Rousey’s defeats were a blessing in disguise as it lead to her now full time career as a WWE Superstar, something that likely wouldn’t have happened had she still been sitting at the top of the MMA mountain.
Ronda received tons of criticism for being a “sore loser,” shutting the media out, not giving her opponents credit or failing to even talk about MMA after seeing her unbeaten streak go out the window.
For Ronda, it was all about the unknown as she says she was never taught how to lose, so understand where the criticism may have come from.
“My parents expected me to be special, so I expected to be special,” said an emotional Rousey. “I was just trying to create the job I wanted, and I wouldn’t have the audacity to do that if my mom didn’t tell me I could,” she added. “But one thing my mother never taught me was how to lose. She never wanted me to entertain it as a possibility. She’d say: ‘Let it suck. It deserves to suck.’”
The good thing about Rousey’s new career is her next losses — and wins — will be pre-determined, so if and when she suffers her first professional wrestling defeat, it won’t hit like a ton of bricks this time around.
Still, it’s good to see Rousey face her demons in public, which according to this statement, isn’t one of her favorite things to do.