Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James had words of support for MMA fighter Ronda Rousey after she lost her second straight fight on Saturday night, this time a 48-second knockout against Amanda Nunes.
James sympathized with Rousey, per Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal:
In sports, in general, they build you up as high as they can, put you on the highest mountain in the world, just to tear you down. That’s coming from somebody who has experienced it. And that’s exactly what she’s going through right now. That’s a fact. I know exactly how she feels because I was that athlete. I went through that.
James, 32, compared Rousey’s fall from grace to his own when he famously left Cleveland for the Miami Heat in a televised event and was vilified by many NBA fans around the country. Rousey, meanwhile, was arguably the most dominant fighter in the UFC—and certainly one of its most visible personalities—over her first 12 fights.
But both Holly Holm and Nunes knocked her out in under a minute, leading to questions as to whether Rousey will ever fight again.
“I don’t know,” UFC president Dana White said on SportsCenter when asked if Rousey will fight again, per Brett Okamoto of ESPN. “Ronda obviously needs to go home and take some time. She’s very rich. She doesn’t need to fight anymore. She’s super competitive. Maybe she wants to, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.”
Her agent, Brad Slater, added: “It’s too soon to say anything about the future. I don’t want to speak for her. She’s going to take some time to process this.”
James didn’t want to speculate on Rousey’s future.
“You don’t know her mindset,” he said. “You don’t know the drive, is the drive still there? You don’t know. But you can tell that it’s built and built and built and built and built, they always make the teardown story more important than how long it took for her to actually get to the mountaintop.”
One thing James didn’t add is that the sports world also loves a comeback story, and Rousey would certainly be primed to tell a great one if she decides to continue fighting. If she can rediscover the dominance that once saw her end fights against Alexis Davis, Cat Zingano and Bethe Correia in a combined one minute and four seconds between July 2014 and August 2015, her story would take another compelling turn.
James, after all, won two titles with the Heat and led the Cavaliers to their first NBA title in 2016 since The Decision. If Rousey wants to continue fighting and is looking for motivation, James’ story perhaps can provide it.
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