She Proved That Failure Is Not The End – Ronda Rousey’s Great Comeback Story

Born in 1987 in California, Ronda Rousey endured a tough childhood marked by speech problems and her father’s suicide. She became a judo champion, earning back-to-back golds at the Pan American Championships and a 2008 Olympic bronze medal.

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Rousey joined the mixed martial arts circuit in 2010, earning fame as the UFC Bantamweight Champion, before suffering her first loss in November 2015. In January 2018, she announced her move to the WWEpro wrestling circuit.

Childhood

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Rousey is the daughter of AnnMaria De and Ron Rousey. She was born with umbilical cord around her neck because of which she struggled with speech and could not form an intelligible sentence, when she was young. Her father committed suicide when Rousey was 8 years old. With all frustration building up she found a way out when her mother persuaded her to practice Judo. Rousey dropped out of high school and later earned a G.E.D. She was raised in Southern California and Jamestown, North Dakota.

Ronda began her training in Judo at a young age guided by her mother AnnMaria, also a champion judoka. AnnMaria won gold at the 1984 World Judo Championships and taught her daughter the martial art as she was growing up. Rousey’s mother found no competitive Judo championships for women when she was playing the sport despite the fact that she was a 6th degree black belt, and ended up leaving it to earn an MBA instead. She would also go on to earn a PhD. he was brought up by her champion mother to never believe there was something women could not do.

Ronda Rousey And Judo

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Rousey was named to the United States Olympic team at age 15, and at 16 she became the youngest American to earn the national No. 1 ranking in the women’s half-middleweight division. Although she didn’t earn a medal at the 2004 Olympics, she claimed gold at that year’s World Junior and Pan American Judo Championships. In 2006, she became the first American woman in 12 years to earn a World Championship medal by finishing second in the 2007 tournament and won gold at the 2007 Pan American Games. No matter how many bones she broke she just get on going.

How She Fought Off Depression

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At the age of 21 she suddenly started losing interest in Judo, even after becoming no. 1. She suffered from depression. And, unsure of what to do in the wake of her judo career, Rousey worked as a bartender. She also lived out of her car for a spell in Los Angeles. Ronda Rousey got highly addicted to smoking pot and drinking. She started feeling worthless. At that point she realised that she is just ruining her life and need to get it back together. She decided to take control of her life and start training even harder. In August 2010 she made her amateur debut in mixed martial arts, a victory by way of an armbar after just 23 seconds. Two more amateur bouts ended via armbar submission after 57 and 24 seconds, respectively.

Rousey continued her run of domination after turning pro in the sport, reeling off four straight wins in under a minute apiece. In March 2012, she became the Strikeforce Women’s Bantamweight Champion by defeating Miesha Tate in four minutes and 27 seconds. Today she’s a master of mixed martial arts (judo being her main discipline), and is taking the UFC world by storm with her tough girl attitude. Ronda Rousey is the type of role model everyone can support.

Body Image

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Body image issues are extremely common, especially with young girls and women, although they are not necessarily exclusive to them. T Young girls are inundated by images of impossibly tiny bodies selling products that are often completely unrelated, but the images stick.

Rousey was no stranger to this herself. Prior to her entry into UFC, the champion was dealing with anorexia, and spoke of this in news.

“It feels liberating to free of the guilt that used to come with every meal. And I feel like I have so much extra space in my brain now that I’m not constantly thinking about the next meal and trying to eat as much as possible every day while still losing weight,”

she says.

Public Sexism

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Rousey has faced sexist diatribe from a few colleagues and several armchair critics over the media and internet. Most famously, Floyd Mayweather, when asked about Rousey following her recent victory over Bethe Correia, was asked about the women’s bantamweight champion in an interview. He responded with “I don’t know who she is,” following this up weeks later asking Rousey to “make real money” before he spoke to her.

Ronda Rousey, however, did not take this lying down. She won the ESPY Sportsperson of the Year award this year, beating Mayweather to the prize. In rejoinder, she asked Mayweather how it felt to “be beaten by a woman for once.”

Voice Of Women

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Rousey speaks repeatedly of the importance of independence, of how women should not be ‘do-nothings’ and ‘take care of themselves’. In a world where pictures, film and media rhetoric constantly give women the idea that they must ‘be’ a certain way in order to be ‘liked’, she gives them the all-important message that the most important thing in the world is to be oneself – for nobody else, a message that will go a long way in helping women world-over build a self-belief they may not have previously had.

Check out this inspiring video below as well,

What do you think about her story? Let us know in the comments below. Also, do share your source of inspiration and we’ll surely check it out.