Eloyse Chesney could not be reached for comment for this report.
She was out trick-or-treating.
Unorthodox trick-or-treat scheduling aside, it’s a good thing for her that she already has enough notoriety to last her until second grade. The Pennsylvania five-year-old became a viral Halloween sensation in MMA circles and beyond after her family shared photos of her costumed in the spitting image of one Ronda Rousey.
.@RondaRousey inspires one young girl’s Halloween costume. Just adorable https://t.co/SwQfLWqGHp pic.twitter.com/hFPpZYLDnO
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 24, 2015
“She watched her UFC debut fight,” said Eloyse‘s father, Heath, a longtime MMA fan and systems engineer in Hanover, Pennsylvania. “We like to go out of our way to find females who are into dominant male things. It’s hard to find a female singer-guitarist, so we found Heart videos. She started identifying with girls who could do anything.”
Considering that Eloyse‘s previous costumes have includes Olivia Newton-John and Lady Gaga in that meat dress, Halloween isn’t a store-bought initiative in the Chesney household. A brainstorm session led to this year’s stroke of inspiration.
“We were sitting at dinner,” Chesney recalled, “and we were talking about Ronda Rousey, and I said, ‘Pickle’—my nickname for her is Pickle—I said, ‘Pickle, you can be Ronda Rousey for Halloween.’ And she said, ‘I can?'”
The rest is social media history. Chesney shared a photo on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and it took off from there. The reaction has been mostly positive, though there has been some incredulity over Eloyse‘s choice of sport.
“People said things like, ‘How dare you let her watch MMA?’ We kind of laughed,” Chesney said. “If they really watched MMA, they’d see that 80 percent of the time, there’s no blood. It’s all defense and leverage. It’s a physical chess match.”
No word yet from Rousey herself on the costume, but the Chesney family is still hopeful it may get a shout-out from the UFC women’s bantamweight champ. In the meantime, it’ll have to make do with thousands of views, likes and retweets.
“It really kind of took off,” Chesney said. “It’s been a fun and positive thing.”
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