My Fight / Your Fight

Ronda Rousey, Maria Burns Ortiz

• Publisher: Regan Arts.
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781941393260
• eBook ISBN: 9781941393857

THE ONLY OFFICIAL RONDA ROUSEY BOOK "The fight is yours to win." In this inspiring and moving book, Ronda Rousey, the Olympic medalist in judo, reigning UFC women's bantamweight champion, and Hollywood star charts her difficult path to glory. Marked by her signature charm, barbed wit, and undeniable power, Rousey's account of the toughest fights of her life—in and outside the Octagon—reveals the painful loss of her father when she was eight years old, the intensity of her judo training, her battles with love, her meteoric rise to fame, the secret behind her undefeated UFC record, and what it takes to become the toughest woman on Earth. Rousey shares hard-won lessons on how to be the best at what you do, including how to find fulfillment in the sacrifices, how to turn limitations into opportunities, and how to be the best on your worst day. Packed with raw emotion, drama, and wisdom, this is an unforgettable book by one of the most remarkable women in the world.

NOTHING WILL EVER BE PERFECT

You can spend your entire life waiting for perfect. The perfect job. The perfect partner. The perfect opponent. Or you can acknowledge that there is always a better time or a better place or a better opportunity and refuse to let that fact hold you back from doing everything to make the present moment the perfect moment.

I’m not undefeated because I had the perfect circumstances leading up to every fight. I’m undefeated because, regardless of circumstances, I still win.

I had made the jump to the professional ranks, but aside from my record being reset to 0–0, not much had changed. I was still working three jobs. I was still living in a rundown place I found on Craigslist (although I was now renting a room in a house on the verge of being condemned). And fights still kept falling through.

Darin lined up my professional debut against a fighter named Ediane Gomes. As part of the deal, he was paying for her flight (which is not standard for a low-level pro bout). It was scheduled for March 27, 2011, at a country club in nearby Tarzana. Each fighter would make four hundred dollars for showing up, with the winner getting double.

I pulled up all the information and videos I could find of her previous fights. She had a record of 6–1 and was creaming people. She’ll do, I thought.

The way my fights kept falling through, Edmond had been working with me more regularly, but we were focusing on building up my skills as opposed to preparing for any single opponent.

“It doesn’t matter who you’re fighting,” Edmond told me. “It doesn’t matter if they give you one day’s notice, you’re going to win.”

I nodded in agreement.

The week of the fight, I allowed myself to believe it was really going to happen. I could not wait.

“What do you want your walkout song to be?” Darin asked me a few days before the fight.

“‘Sex and Violence’ by The Exploited,” I replied. The song consisted of the words sex and violence repeated over and over.

Two days before the fight, I was lying in my room thinking about how I was going to destroy this girl when I heard a commotion in the living room. Mochi had been playing with my roommate’s dog. Now they were fighting.

Porkchop, a sixty-pound pitbull, was on his back and Mochi, who had grown to eighty pounds, had him by the neck. Mochi looked like she was going to kill him. Without thinking, I gave Mochi a swift kick in the ribs. She jumped back, leaving Porkchop flailing about. Still in fight mode, he bit me twice—once on the foot and once in the shin. I felt his sharp teeth break through my skin and sink into my muscle.

Before my body even registered the pain, I began to worry about what the injury would mean for the fight.

I collapsed on the living room floor and pulled off my sock. There was a hole in the arch of my foot. Flesh was hanging off the base of my toes. A split second later, blood filled the holes and started gushing onto the carpet. I grabbed my cell phone off the floor where it had fallen during the chaos and dialed Darin’s number. I needed to go a doctor and I needed for nobody to know about it.

As I waited for Darin to find me a doctor, I pulled myself up off the living room floor. My foot was swelling up. I hopped into the kitchen, leaving a trail of blood droplets. There wasn’t any ice, but there were several open packages of frozen vegetables. I hopped to the bathroom and wrapped the bags of vegetables around my foot with an Ace bandage.

In the living room, my phone rang. I hopped back to answer it, frozen peas and carrots spilling out behind me.

“Get a pencil,” Darin said.

He had a friend who was a fancy plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills who was willing to see me off-the-record.

I called DPCG. “I need you,” I said.

“I’m on my way,” he told me before I could even explain the situation.

I had moved to the kitchen, because it would be easier to clean blood off the tile.

Fifteen minutes later, I heard DPCG rush into the house.

“Where are you?” he called.

“Follow the blood and carrots!” I shouted.

He came into the kitchen, a look of concern on his face. Without saying anything, he scooped me up and carried me to his car.

I put my foot up on the dashboard and stared at the blood that was seeping through the bandage. DPCG had one hand on the steering wheel as I squeezed his other hand. Tears ran down my cheeks.

“It’s going to be OK,” he said.

The spa-like waiting room was filled with wealthy women seeking Botox and boob jobs. They all turned to stare, but the woman behind the reception desk looked completely unfazed.

DPCG took me into the exam room. The doctor looked at the blood-soaked bandage and thawed vegetables.

“Do you mind if I take this off?” he asked.

He unwrapped the bandage, “Wow, this looks pretty bad. You’re definitely going to need stitches.”

I started to sob. I was terrified I would not be able to compete.

No, I thought. I am not going down like this.

I wiped away the tears and looked at the doctor. “The only thing I need to know is will I permanently hurt myself if I fight on this?”

He paused, taken slightly aback. “Well, no. I mean, you’ll rip the stitches, and it’ll take longer to heal, but you’re not going to do any permanent damage.”

I took a deep breath and said, “OK, then, sew me up.”

He looked at me, uncertain as to whether he should be impressed or have me committed, then slowly said, “I can do that, but you’re going to burst your stitches open in the first round. You’ll bleed all over everywhere and everyone’s going to know.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll just have to win faster than that.”

He took out a kit to sew me up. He picked up the needle.

“Do you want the stitch knot from the outside?” he asked. “If I stitch it from the inside, it won’t scar so badly. But if I stitch it from the outside, it’ll be stronger.”

“Fuck the scar,” I said. “Do the one that’s stronger.”

The doctor finished stitching me up. There were three stitches on the side arch of my foot, six over the top.

“That’s the best I can do,” he said, looking at his work. “But you better win fast.”

“I will,” I promised.

DPCG carried me back out to the car.

The next morning, my foot was throbbing even worse. I had iced it overnight and took Advil and the antibiotics the doctor prescribed, but it had swollen up considerably. Still, I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to beat this girl. The real challenge was going to be getting through the weigh-in and the medical check. If you have stitches, they won’t let you fight.

It took nearly all of my energy not to limp into the building for the weigh-in.

The doctor performed a cursory exam.

“Hop on one foot,” he said.

I hopped on my right leg.

“Now the other.”

I shifted all my weight to my left foot and hopped with a stoic face. I could feel the stitches bulge under the weight.

“Everything looks good,” the doctor said.

You have no idea, I thought. Now, we just had to weigh in.

Then the athletic commission representative dropped a bomb on me.

“Shorts or underwear only,” an official announced. “So shirts, shoes, socks, they all need to come off.”

No socks? My pulse spiked.

The only thing racing faster than my heart was my mind.

Then I had an idea.

Here’s the thing about making weight. If you’re comfortably within your weight, you might weigh in wearing underwear or fight shorts. But if you’re close, you can weigh in naked. When that happens, members of your team hold towels around you so that you’re not giving the public a free show.

“I think I drank too much water,” I announced loudly so anyone in the general vicinity could hear.

“I’m paranoid that I’m not going to make weight,” I told Darin. “I’m going to weigh in naked.”

“What?” he asked me as if I had lost my mind. “Why? It doesn’t matter. She’s overweight. You don’t need to.” My opponent had shown up overweight and had been upfront about it. I had been starving myself to make 145 pounds.

“I’m getting naked,” I blurted out.

I started ripping off my clothes while my team rushed to find towels to hold up in front of me. Everyone was confused and scrambling, and in the pandemonium, no one noticed that I had jumped on the scale with my back to the room and took off my socks last. I weighed in at 145.5, three and a half pounds lighter than the other girl, and while everyone was busy trying to figure out why I had suddenly decided I needed to weigh in naked, I put on my socks before anyone noticed my mangled foot. By the time I’d pulled on my underwear, I knew I’d be fighting the next evening.

On fight night, I slipped an ankle sleeve upside down over my foot to cover the stitches. My foot hurt so badly that I was limited in my warm-up.

“You better make this quick,” Edmond said.

“I know,” I said.

“You’re crazy,” he told me.

I just smiled. He was probably right.

I watched as Gomes walked into the cage, the hip-hop beat of her walkout song blaring through the venue. She danced around the cage.

You won’t be dancing when I’m done with you, I thought.

The drumbeat of “Sex and Violence” came over the speakers. I marched out, the pain in my foot suddenly irrelevant.

The referee clapped his hands and the bell rang.

I came forward with a jab and a left hook and we clinched. I tried to throw her forward, but she resisted. I instinctively changed direction and swept her left foot with a kouchi-gari judo throw. As the stitches on the arch of my foot collided with her heel, signals of pain flared. I ignored them. She hit the ground and I mounted her immediately. I punched her in the face several times; the blows focused less on inflicting damage and more on forcing her to react. She turned to her side: There it was! I spun into my favorite juji gatame armbar, and she tapped. The bell had barely stopped ringing. The entire fight lasted twenty-five seconds.

I raised my hands above my head. I had won. For a split second, it felt amazing.

The joy of that first pro victory was slightly tempered by the pain receptors kicking back in, my brain letting me know that my foot hurt like a motherfucker.

I was 1–0, and I was impatient. A week after my win, I took nail clippers and cut the stitches out of my foot. The doctor had been right; the scar was noticeable. I thought it looked badass. I was ready for another fight.

Darin told me he had one lined up in Calgary against a fighter named Charmaine Tweet. She would only take the fight at 150 pounds, but I was desperate for an opponent. We booked our plane tickets. I was going back to Canada. But from the beginning, the match was jinxed. When I told Edmond the date, he furrowed his brow; his son was due right around then. Then, two weeks before the fight, I was at Rite Aid with Jennifer when Darin called.

“I’ve got some news,” he said. “Strikeforce called. They want to sign you to a fight.”

Strikeforce was the highest level professional MMA organization that had a women’s division. They wanted me to fight Sarah D’Alelio because Gina Carano, who was slated to be making a comeback after two years away, had pulled out with a medical issue.

I was getting the call-up from the minor leagues to the big time. Strikeforce fights paid a lot more money than the small shows. This meant I could quit my three jobs and finally make ends meet by fighting.

I felt like the heavens had opened up and angels were singing. The biggest smile spread across my face. I actually squealed in delight, moving my feet up and down in what was a publicly acceptable happy dance.

“What is it?” Jen whispered.

“The only thing is the fight is scheduled for June 18,” Darin said.

I paused.

“The fight in Canada is the night before,” I said.

“But don’t worry about it. We’ll get you ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Foreword by Dana White, President of the UFC
• Why I Fight
• Fight Night
• I Was Born Ready
• Winning Is the Greatest Feeling in the World
• Everything Can Change in a Split Second
• Never Underestimate an Opponent
• Losing Is One of the Most Devastating Experiences in Life
• Tragedy Precedes Success
• Do Not Accept Less than What You’re Capable Of
• Just Because It’s a Rule Doesn’t Mean It’s Right
• Pain Is Just One Piece of Information
• Turn Limitations into Opportunities
• Trust in Knowledge, Not in Strength
• Know When to Move On
• Find Fulfillment in the Sacrifices
• You Have to Be the Best on Your Worst Day
• No One Has the Right to Beat You
• You Will Never Win a Fight by Running Away
• Don’t Rely on Others to Make Your Decisions
• People Around You Control Your Reality
• The End of a Failed Move Is Always the Beginning of the Next One
• Anything of Value Has to Be Earned
• Everything Is as Easy as a Decision
• When Do You Cross the Magical Boundary That Stops You from Dreaming Big?
• People Appreciate Excellence No Matter Who You Are
• A Loss Is Still a Loss, but It’s Better to Go Out in Flaming Glory
• This Is My Situation, but This Isn’t My Life
• You Can’t Rely on Just One Thing to Make You Happy
• Disregard Nonessential Information
• Relationships That Are Easily Ruined Were Never Worth Much
• Someone Has to Be the Best in the World. Why Not You?
• Finding a Coach Is Like Finding a Boyfriend
• You Will Be Tested
• Champions Always Do More
• Plan Out the First Exchange
• Nothing Will Ever Be Perfect
• If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Do It
• The Only Power People Have Over You Is the Power You Give Them
• Winning Is a Habit
• I’d Rather Expose Myself Willingly Than Wait in Fear for It to Happen Against My Will
• Refuse to Accept Any Other Reality
• The Best Fighters Are Patient at the Right Times
• There Is a Moment in a Match Where It’s There for the Taking and It Comes Down to Who Wants It Most
• Fight for Every Single Second
• You Have to Be Willing to Embarrass Yourself
• Success Is the Best Revenge
• Learn to Read the Rest Beats
• Prepare for the Perfect Opponent
• Don’t Let Anyone Force You to Take a Step Backward
• The Answer Is: There Is No Right Answer
• I Have Been There
• The Hardest Part Is Knowing When to Walk Away
• Winning
• Thank you . . .
• About the Authors
• Copyright