On Monday, undefeated UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion and surprise WrestleMania 31 star Ronda Rousey sat down with Dan Le Batard and Bomani Jones on ESPN’s Highly Questionable.
Ronda talked about her past, and in 2008, she ended up living in her car.
Ronda: It was after the 2008 Olympics, and I had got into a little bit of a disagreement with my mother. I was not wanting to live in my house, I had just got a car, and I was looking for an apartment. In the meantime, instead of going home, I was way too prideful, so I just slept in my car in parking lots in Hollywood.
Bomani: “A little bit of a disagreement”, it normally takes a little more than a little to get you to sleep in a car for a week.”
Ronda: “You don’t know my mother”
Ronda then refused to give Highly Questionable a ratings bump by saying that she would beat up Floyd Mayweather. Boo! She then talked a little about her mom, a woman she called the “toughest person I know.”
Ronda: She’s the toughest person I know, by far. She stopped actually training with me, doing randori, judo sparring, when I was a kid and I didn’t find out until a couple years ago that we were doing randori one day and she broke her wrist. I didn’t even know, that’s how tough she is, she broke her wrist and played it off like nothing happened, and I didn’t find out until ten years later. She is the biggest badass I know.
Dan: Can you see retirement from here, is that something you’re actively thinking about?
Ronda: Well, I know you have a short shelf-life in this sport, but of course I’m going to keep fighting for as long as possible. If I keep coming out of these fights unscathed, I can pretty much fight forever. I think I’ve actually fought in the UFC for fifteen minutes. Something like that, a little over fifteen minutes, and I haven’t even gotten a bruise from getting hit yet. If it keeps going like that, I’ll have a much longer career, but if I have a couple of five-round wars, it’ll be a lot shorter.
Dan: You haven’t had a bruise, you haven’t had a pain, like, in all of your fighting time, you literally haven’t had a bruise? You’re not exaggerating there?
Ronda: Well, not from getting hit. So, my fight against Alexis Davis last summer, I had a cyst in my knuckle because when I went and shot Expendables, I can’t wrap my hands, I have the smallest hands in all of the UFC. So I lost all my callouses while I was there. I only did grappling, and I kept ripping off the skin on my knuckle, over and over, three fight camps in a row. When I hit Alexis Davis with that overhand right that knocked her out, my knuckle exploded and I got nine stitches. And I threw her after that, and I had never thrown anyone that was unconscious before, so I didn’t really think that her head would move backwards when I threw her. So when I went to throw the first punch, my fist skimmed her face and I broke my thumb in three places right at the joint. Of course you get overwhelmed, and I didn’t know any of this happened, so I’m giving people high fives walking out of the arena. It wasn’t until I took my glove off that I saw my knuckle had exploded, and I didn’t even find out until seven days later that my thumb was broken. So, I did that to myself.
Bomani: You’ve been hurt more by hitting someone that was unconscious than you’ve been hurt by people actually hitting you?
Ronda: Yes, exactly. My biggest injury was from hitting someone that was unconscious, you’re right. It’s funny when you put it that way.
It’s got to be disconcerting for an opponent to know that Rousey can only be stopped by self-inflicted attacks.
