Ronda Rousey stepped back into the cage, submitted Gina Carano with an armbar in 17 seconds, and now she’s stepping back out into retirement.
Aside from the money and the ratings, what exactly was the point of Rousey spending her final MMA fight competing against Carano? According to a new statement from Ronda released on Tuesday afternoon, it was to help Carano heal her body, which in turn helped Rousey heal her own soul.
“Me and Gina literally fought to fight each other,” Rousey wrote. “I kept hearing
people say ‘She’s not serious,’ ‘She can’t lose the weight,’ but I didn’t just want to come back to fight, I HAD to come back to fight HER. The story we could tell together was one I desperately needed to believe: That you’re never too low to rise again, that your body is never too far gone to reclaim, and that it’s never too late to be better than you’ve ever been.”
“Her bravery astounded me,” Rousey continued. “At her lowest point she set her highest goal — to lose 100lbs and take on the baddest bitch on the planet! What I never could have expected was seeing how that woman transformed over the following year would give me just as much joy as my own transformation. Every time I saw her she was stronger, more confident, more beautiful than ever — not because she was losing weight but because that light she had lost was growing brighter and brighter.”
“At the same time I was peeling back the layers of my own walls I’d put up and rediscovering a world that was so ingrained in the fabric of my soul but was too proud to admit I needed. I love MMA, I love judo, pro wrestling, fight choreography, acting and writing — but I am before anything else a martial artist. I’m better at MMA than I ever was at anything else — and f–k who this may offend, but I am the best to have ever done it and nothing can compare to the experience of creating within my craft.
“I am the one fortunate enough to experience that level of mastery and I’ll never let anyone shame me away from embracing it ever again … It healed my soul … The fight is over, it’s bitter sweet because for the first time the experience of preparing for the fight eclipsed the joy any victory could have brought. But I’m finally ready to move on, this time with my head held high.”
Rousey had previously left the sport of MMA on a two fight losing skid, with both being bad KO losses. Now she has this final W on her record, and that’s clearly what matters to her above all else. With another year in the cage she could answer a lot of questions. She could fight Cris Cyborg or Kayla Harrison or Amanda Nunes or Holly Holm. Instead she’s taken the easy win and will walk away happy with that.
