An emotional Ronda Rousey breaks down on the Ellen Degeneres show as the only ex-bantamweight Women’s Champion reflects on her brutal KO (and only) loss against striker queen Holly Holm (10 – 0). For the first time ever, Rowdy speaks in-depth about the fight and its aftermath.
Rousey (13 -1) explains: “I got clipped in the first exchange so I was knocked out on my feet like the first time I got hit.”
It’s hard to really know what’s going on. In that first hit I cut up my whole mouth and I knocked my teeth loose. Guys fight for five five-minute rounds, they are teeing off each other faces the whole time and nothing like that happens. It’s just destiny, it had to go down that way.
It was weird. I had no perception of… I felt like almost I couldn’t see,” she continued. “Like, I could see but I couldn’t tell how far my hand was from my face or how far was she from me. When you sit and you’re not moving, you’re still aware of where your body is. That’s like a part of your brain telling you where you are in space. It was like that kind of turned off. I was swinging blindly. I knew she was out there, but, like, I really don’t remember most of it.”
Remembering her condition post-fight made Ronda visibly emotional as the tears came rushing. The trauma and way of loss weighed heavily on her as she recalls the memory of her current boyfriend and heavyweight fighter Travis Browne:
“Honestly, my thought, I was like, in the medical room and I was like down in the corner, I was in the corner and I was like ‘what am I any more if I’m not this?’”, Rousey said. “I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself and that exact second I’m like ‘I’m nothing, what do I do anymore and no one gives a sh*t about me anymore without this.’”
“And to be honest I looked up and I saw my man Travis was standing up there and I looked up at him and I was like, I need to have his babies,” she said. “I need to stay alive. Really that was it.’ I haven’t told anybody that. I only told him.”
Ronda Rowdy Rousey looks to avenge her loss hoping that Holly Holm would best Meisha Tate (17 – 5) in their upcoming title match; only so that she might one day redeem herself from that KO kick that rocked the world.