Rousey discussed the concussions that ended her combat sports career in a new interview, saying she can’t compete at the highest level any more.
Don’t expect Ronda Rousey to ever return to the UFC.
The Olympic judo bronze medalist and first ever UFC women’s bantamweight champion cut a swathe of destruction through the division when she arrived in the promotion, defending her title six times before losing via head kick knockout to Holly Holm in 2015. A quick stoppage loss to Amanda Nunes in 2016 ended her MMA career, and she moved on to performing with WWE from 2017 to 2023.
For years the general narrative was that Rousey simply couldn’t come to terms with losing, and that’s why she never returned. But with the release of her recent second memoir ‘Our Fight,’ she revealed that it was concussions from her days in judo that had left her unable to compete. She reiterated those issues in a new interview on the Insight podcast.
“Every couple years, the same rumor comes out,” Rousey said of returning to the cage (via MMA Fighting). “It’s nice to feel missed, I guess. But it’s not happening. I’m not neurologically fit to compete anymore at the highest level. I just can’t.”
“You just get to a level where the neurological injuries you take accumulate over time. They don’t get better.”
Concussions are a serious issue in sports, and the more you take the easier it is to get a new one, and the worse the symptoms get. According to Rousey, she was getting symptoms just from taking jabs in training by the end of her fighting career.
“When I got into MMA, I had already had dozens of concussions that I trained through,” she said. “Like, not even stopped for. So that was about a decade of having concussion symptoms more often than not.”
“So when I got into MMA, I was playing a game of zero errors. Then it got to the point where I was fighting more often than anybody. I had more outside of fighting responsibilities than anybody, and it just got to be lighter and lighter hits were hurting me more and more and more. I got to a point where I couldn’t take a jab without getting dazed, without getting concussion symptoms.”
“It just got to a point where it wasn’t safe for me to fight anymore,” she concluded. “I just couldn’t continue to fight at that higher level.”
Rousey kept the concussion situation secret for years because they probably would have ended her career if anyone from an athletic commission knew how bad they were. Now that she’s shared the truth, we doubt there’s much of a chance she can get cleared to fight at all. She may not even be able to wrestle again, at least not with any sort of insurance covering her.
This just goes to remind you of the problems combat sports athletes often face alone. “Rowdy” was mercilessly mocked for disappearing from the MMA world following her two losses, but her story lines up now that we have the concussions to factor in. It just goes to show you that you never really know what someone might be going through behind the scenes, or the sacrifices they make to keep competing.