Ronda Rousey on her lifelong history with concussions and where WWE run went wrong [Exclusive]

Welcome to another edition of the ‘Monday Gorilla Position’! A weekly column here at Cageside Seats that dissects the latest shows and reports in the world of WWE & AEW. In addition to interviews with your favorite professional wrestlers.

Ronda Rousey has kept a great deal bottled up inside over the last decade. No doubt it’s been a cathartic experience to finally tell the world her untold story.

Her exit from UFC. Her time in WWE. The good, the bad and the extremely ugly. In her latest memoir, Our Fight due out next Tuesday (April 2), the Baddest Woman on the Planet holds absolutely nothing back.

During the first half of the 2010’s, Rousey was truly on top of the world. After becoming the first woman ever to sign with UFC, she went on a dominant undefeated streak that lasted well over three years. She made a name for herself by decimating her opponents in the early rounds of her fights — often times in mere seconds.

Rousey grew into a combat sports megastar and that success quickly transitioned into the mainstream, which included a foray into Hollywood.

Everything came crashing down in the fall of 2015. The main event of UFC 193 saw Rousey defending her Women’s Bantamweight Championship against Holly Holm. Ronda was a heavy betting favorite heading into that bout, but just 59 seconds into the second round, Holm connected with a swift kick to Rousey’s left temple and became Generation Y’s Buster Douglas.

The loss came with a heavy amount of criticism as Ronda mostly disappeared from the public eye in the months that followed. Speaking to Cageside Seats ahead of her book release, Rousey says she wasn’t hiding from the media. Instead, there was something else that she was hiding from everyone.

“I had a very rich concussion history before I even started in MMA. For my entire judo career, which was like 10 years, I actually was experiencing concussion symptoms more often than not for an entire decade.”

Rousey began training in judo at the age of 11, and she remembers experiencing her first concussion in those early years of her training. Instead of taking the necessary time to allow the symptoms to subside, she would work through them.

It was the beginning of what Rousey describes as a lifelong cycle of suffering one concussion after another and fighting through the headaches, nausea, blurred vision and numerous other symptoms for weeks at a time. The process would start all over again when she suffered the next concussion. And then the next one.

“Every single time you get one concussion, it’s easier to get the next one. And so I’d been compounding concussion after concussion after concussion for so many years that when I got into MMA, if I got any kind of significant strike, I would be seeing stars. Which is not normal.”

You may be asking yourself why anyone, especially someone that young, would go through something like that. Rousey claims that’s just the way things were handled back then.

“It was just that era where if you bonked your head or something like that and you told your coach, ‘I have photo vision. I have spots in my vision. I’m nauseous. I have a headache.’ They just told you to stop being a p—-y. Suck it up and go back on the mat.”

When transitioning into mixed martial arts, Rousey says she had to create a fighting style that would allow her to take as little damage as possible, because if her opponent landed even one good shot the match could be over then and there.

To boil it down, the plan was to get close to her opponent, stay close and strike before they even knew what was going on.

Her strategy was adapted from something that her mother, and first trainer, taught her when she was young: Go for the win early. The highest opportunity for victory comes in the first moments of a match when your opponent may not be one hundred percent ready to go.

“I wasn’t just winning in the first minute because I was getting lucky or anything like that, Rousey said. “That’s why I don’t touch gloves or anything like that in the beginning of fight. Like, no, I’m not gonna give you a moment to get it set (laughs). We’re fighting now. We had all the touchy glove time for like weeks before that. There’s no high fives. High five time is over.”

Although Rousey was escaping a majority of her matches largely unscathed, her concussion problem only compounded during her UFC tenure.

Eager to prove herself to UFC president Dana White, Rousey swore a blood oath (as she called it) to him and continuously made herself available whenever there was a spot that needed to be filled.

Often Rousey would be booked during the worst times of the year for UFC PPVs, but she always answered the call proudly — whatever she needed to do for Dana to accept her as his warrior. And with each fight came 50 rounds of sparring, and very little time to rest.

“It got to the point where if I was getting touched at all, if I was getting jabbed, I was starting to get concussion symptoms and I couldn’t tell my coach about it. I couldn’t tell Dana about it. ‘Cause, they would retire me. They wouldn’t let me fight. And I wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to admit that I couldn’t do everything perfectly. ‘Cause that’s what I had to believe to be able to be at that level.”

Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

The night Rousey suffered her first defeat in UFC, she wasn’t even supposed to be on the card. The original main event for UFC 193 was going to feature Welterweight Champion Robbie Lawler defending his title against Carlos Condit.

Lawler suffered an injury during the run up to that fight and needed more time to recover. So Dana White turned to Ronda Rousey to fill the void by moving up her title defense against Holly Holm, which was supposed to happen at UFC 195 in Las Vegas on January 2, 2016. Knowing how important the night was for White and the UFC, Rousey stepped up to defend her title for what turned out to be the final time.

To hear Rousey tell it, it’s possible she lost that fight before she ever even boarded the plane to Melbourne, Australia. Two weeks prior to entering that cage, Ronda says she slipped down a flight of stairs, knocked herself unconscious and suffered an ACL injury. In addition to walking into the fight with reason to believe she’d just recently suffered another concussion, to make matters worse she also brought the wrong mouthguard that night.

“The first time I got touched in that fight, it knocked all my bottom teeth loose and I was completely out on my feet the entire fight,” Rousey said. “I couldn’t see how far away she was from me, if that makes sense. And [I was] not seeing things as quickly. Usually when I fight, time dilates and I see everything in slow motion. This was like I was in like a fog where I couldn’t tell a range or anything.”

Rousey remembers desperately trying to make it to the round break against Holm, hoping it would give her enough time to recover. All it did was delay the inevitable.

Her undefeated streak was over. Her championship run was over. And not long after her MMA career would be over.

It was tough for Rousey to come to terms with the fact that she could no longer compete at the highest level in UFC. At the time in her career when she felt she was never stronger, faster or had a better grasp of the fight game, it seemed her lifelong battle had finally caught up with her. From that day on, Ronda says any small little hit would take her for a spin.

“Your brain doesn’t callous. It doesn’t get tougher. It’s just an inevitable decline and there’s nothing I could do about it.”

Rousey continued to keep quiet about her condition in the years that followed. First and foremost in her mind, she didn’t want to put a target on herself as she attempted to continue her MMA career.

A year after her loss to Holm, Rousey challenged Amanda Nunes for the Bantamweight Championship at UFC 207 and suffered the same fate as she did in her previous bout. The first shot she took from Nunes knocked Ronda out on her feet and she was defeated in 48 seconds.

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When it came time to make the jump to WWE, a major concern for Rousey was whether or not she’d even be cleared to compete.

“They were scanning my brain and I was like please don’t find that I’m just falling apart on the inside of my skull. But they said everything looked great. I was cleared to wrestle, but I just wouldn’t be able to talk about [my concussion history].”

Rousey’s final bout in UFC came 15 months before she would make her in-ring debut for WWE at WrestleMania 34, in a mixed tag match that featured Rousey teaming up with Kurt Angle to take on the team of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon.

A few weeks before the opening bell rang for that match, Rousey says she’d already experienced her first head trauma in WWE.

Elimination Chamber 2018 saw a segment get booked where Rousey would sign her exclusive contract to become on Monday Night Raw Superstar. In typical WWE fashion, the contract signing escalated into a physical altercation thanks to some provoking on the part of everyone’s favorite Olympic gold medalist.

Rousey would send Triple H crashing through a table and then Stephanie would retaliate by delivering one of her patented opened hand slaps across the face of the former UFC Champion.

“It gave me a concussion,” Rousey claimed, adding this was not an isolated incident during her first WWE run. “Nikki Bella gave me an open hand slap [in the days leading to their match at Evolution] and I was seeing stars and I had a headache for the rest of the day.”

Just as she did throughout her judo and MMA careers, Rousey reports that she would continuously battle on again, off again concussion symptoms throughout her time in WWE.

“I didn’t wanna say anything. I didn’t want them to say, ‘Oh, you can’t do this match that you’ve been preparing for. You can’t do this, can’t do that. And I had a lifetime of experience hiding concussions. And so now that I’ve basically putting all of that behind me, I can finally be open about these things.”

Her medical history is far from the only thing Rousey has been open about in recent days. During a Never Before Told interview last Wednesday to promote her new book, Ronda gave fans a sneak peak of what they can expect to read once it’s available next month — much of which has to do with…

“How much of an absolute shit show it is at the WWE.”

Excerpts from Our Fight have already surfaced online and the comments toward WWE, specifically the company’s former CEO and some of his closest allies, have not been kind (to say the least).

Rousey says that her and her co-author Maria Burns Ortiz had a great deal of fun throughout the writing process coming up with different ways to describe her disdain for Vince McMahon and how he ran his company.

“Everything just being beholden to this near 80-year-old man, who has five or six episodes of ‘Behind the Bastards’ about him, is not a very good business model.”

In the wake of the recent sex trafficking lawsuit against McMahon and WWE, Rousey unloaded on the former Chairman of the Board. Referring to McMahon as an Emperor Palpatine-esque figure in WWE, Rousey writes that it is impossible to pinpoint exactly where the vile, evil portrayal of McMahon on television and who he truly is as a person differentiate.

The former Women’s Champion also targeted the company’s multi-million dollar deal with Saudi Arabia, and made claims of a sexualized, casting couch culture for female talent long before the Women’s Revolution was put into motion by passionate fans demanding the company be better.

The only thing holding back Rousey from spewing even more vitriol in the direction of McMahon, as well as close confidants John Laurinaitis and Bruce Pritchard, was a contractually obligated 90,000 word cap which forced her to streamline her attacks by a few thousand words.

Rousey’s personal frustrations as a performer stemmed from the lack of screen and prep time for many of the women in the locker, that their male counterparts were often afforded.

“The Bloodline is able to plan things out a year ahead of time, and they won’t even talk to me until I get to the arena. About anything,” Rousey said. “I proved in my first match that if you give me the time, the resources and preparation, I can put together an amazing match. And I feel like they’re really doing that with Logan Paul and allowing him to rehearse and put these things together and have all these different resources, producers to bring him to his highest potential. And it got to the point where he girls [weren’t] gonna get any of that.”

During her time in UFC from 2012-2016, Rousey saw how that company was open to change. Dana White once publicly proclaimed that women would never fight in the UFC, but once he saw that female fighters could generate numbers as high or even higher than the men, he pounced on the opportunity for a fresh revenue stream.

When it comes to Vince McMahon, Ronda felt the only thing that mattered was for him to imprint his viewpoint on the rest of the world. So even when some of his most talented female performers got more over than anybody else, Rousey says they were given a fraction of the time and the resources as the men in the company.

“I just didn’t wanna be Vince’s action f—-ing figure anymore. I felt like I was like doing custom matches for a f—-ing sicko in the back,” Rousey said. “All power to the girls that keep fighting the good fight. But I’m in my mid-30’s now. I’ve got s—t to do.”

In the Summer of 2022, when Vince McMahon retired from WWE, Rousey’s experiences did not improve. During that time, she firmly believes that McMahon was still pulling the company’s creative strings through a trusted surrogate.

“He was never gone while I was there. He was just phoning it in through Bruce Pritchard,” Rousey claimed. “My agent who works at WME (Endeavor), he was telling me, ‘You know, he’s completely gone now, I swear.’ And I’m like, I’ll believe it when I see it, because everyone said he left before. He never left. He was there by text message.”

By the time that McMahon had found a way to get himself reinstated to his old position of Executive Chairman of WWE in January of 2023, Rousey’s frustrations with her creative direction had already reached a boiling point.

Making history in the Main Event

When she first signed with the company in early 2018, Ronda didn’t have some grand ambition to change the landscape of women’s professional wrestling. Admittedly, she just wanted to leave the world of competition and all the anxiety that came in tow behind her and just have some fun with her friends.

Looking back on how her first run with the company played out, Rousey says she quickly lost sight of why she initially signed with WWE and got swept away in the Women’s Revolution and the run up to WrestleMania 35.

Thanks in large part to Rousey’s star power and mainstream appeal, a women’s match closing the ‘Showcase of the Immortals’ was a real possibility for the first time ever. Add into the mix a well-accomplished generational talent in Charlotte Flair and the meteoric rise of “The Man” Becky Lynch and possibility soon turned into undeniability.

On this very date five years ago, WWE announced that the Women’s Championship Triple Threat Match between Ronda Rousey, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch would be main event WrestleMania 35 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

Rousey laments the fact that she only had a fraction of the time to prepare for that match than she did to get ready for her in-ring debut the year before. Calling it mind-boggling that the company spent a year building to this moment, only to wait until to the final hours to plan out what they were going to do.

“It was an amazing moment, but I also felt kind of like disappointed ‘cause I felt like it could have been so much more and it was kind of just rushed and slapped together. I feel like it could have been one of the greatest matches that ever happened. And it just ended up being good enough.”

A match of that significance was sure to garner heavy media obligations for its competitors, in addition to the normal chaos of a WrestleMania weekend. And that turn out to be a factor in the amount of prep time all three ladies had to put everything together.

This is something Becky Lynch covers in her own book, The Man: Not Your Average, Average Girl, but I’ll have more on The Man’s memoir on Tuesday. Stay tuned.

In addition to the lack of prep time, Rousey says they were given certain restrictions that they were forced to work around. One example was a limit on the number of powerslams they were allowed to perform due to the frequency of the move’s usage in previous matches on the card.

“I look back to like the accomplishment fondly, but I think one thing that I learned with it is that progress is something that needs to be maintained. Not something like, ‘Oh the women were the main event of WrestleMania, okay, we’re equal now. We’re done.’ Yeah, no. That’s not how it works. And it actually regressed after that because I feel like people kind of relaxed on the issue.”

Rousey would take an extended break from WWE after WrestleMania 35, deciding not to return to the company until the 2022 Women’s Royal Rumble Match. Not long after her hiatus came to an end, Ronda would start to experience that regression firsthand.

Don’t call it a comeback… at least not the one she wanted

Rousey’s lackluster feelings toward her final appearance in WWE was a big driving force in her decision to return to the company nearly three years later. She also desperately wanted to deliver the one match fans never got to experience — and still to this day, have not.

“I felt like [WrestleMania 35] didn’t live up to my own expectations for it. And I wanted to come back and do a singles with Becky and really put in the time and development that it needed.

The story of Rousey coming back to seek revenge against the only woman to ever defeat her inside a wrestling ring was there for the taking, but the timing didn’t necessarily line up with storylines that were already in motion.

Becky Lynch was beginning to reach the height of her Big Time Bex heel persona and behind the scenes she was pushing to keep her promise to do right by Bianca Belair (as outlined in her memoir), after Lynch decimated the E-S-T in 26 seconds to win the SmackDown Women’s Championship at SummerSlam.

Rousey was instead paired up with another former rival and challenged Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 38 for her… well… SmackDown Women’s Championship. Y’all remember that title exchange from Hell following the WWE Draft? I digress.

With the stars not quite aligned for the big show in Dallas, surely WWE would build toward The Man vs. The Baddest Woman on the Planet at some point over the next year, right? They would not. And Rousey says the powers that be, pretty much, kept her in the dark about it.

“WWE just refused to work with me at all. They refused to collaborate. They didn’t want to talk to me about it. They kept pushing it off and pushing it off until it finally got to the road WrestleMania, and they’re like, yeah, we’re not gonna do you and Becky.”

Welcome to the aforementioned boiling point for Ronda Rousey. Her frustrations had grown to the level where she felt there was no other alternative than to give the company an ultimatum.

“I’m like, ‘Alright, well then I’m f—-ing leaving unless me and Shanya [Baszler] can tag.” Rousey said. “If you guys don’t want to work with me, you don’t wanna do something extraordinary. You just wanna do good enough every single night. I came here to have fun with my friends.”

Fast forward to the end of December 2022, just when it seemed like Rousey would once again be in the World Title picture for WrestleMania season, she lost her SmackDown Women’s Championship in stunning fashion.

Minutes after a successful title defense against Raquel Rodriguez, Charlotte Flair made a surprise return to WWE after taking several months off and goaded Ronda into another Championship match right then and there.

It ended up being an easy night of work for The Queen as she bested an exhausted Ronda Rousey with a rollup victory in 41 seconds.

In the weeks that followed Rousey and Shanya Baszler would begin their push to capturing the Women’s Tag Team Titles, starting with their win in the Women’s Tag Team Showcase at WrestleMania 39.

Charlotte Flair meantime, would go on to defend her title against Rhea Ripley in what Rousey deemed the match of the entire weekend out in Los Angeles, but apparently one that was not without some level of controversy. Ronda claims their nearly 24-minute encounter ran way heavy on time.

“They weren’t supposed to go that long. The whole time the referee is telling them to go backstage and Charlotte threw her big dick on the table and said no, we’re gonna do this awesome f—-ing match. And that’s what [the women are] dealing with. They’re not allowed to show how f—-ing amazing they are, because ‘Oh, the crowd’s gonna be tired for the guys match afterward.’ That’s bull s—-!”

To this day Rousey still has a love for professional wrestling, but her experience in working with WWE created far too much frustration and anxiety for her to want to stick around.

“I had a long sit down with Triple H and I was like, ‘I can’t be associated with mediocrity.’ And that’s what they seemed to be happy with at the time. And I hope that is different now, but I can’t say… that I’ve ever experienced it any other way.”

Ronda’s final match in WWE was at SummerSlam last year, an MMA Rules Match against Shayna Baszler in which Rousey put her former tag team partner over before departing the company for the second time.

Two months later there would be yet another change in the WWE creative process. After WWE’s merger with UFC under the Endeavor umbrella became official, Vince McMahon would once again be removed from the creative team. This time it was by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, and the full reigns were finally handed over to Triple H.

Changes were almost instantaneous as a number of talents who had seldom been used in the months prior, like Johnny Gargano and JD McDonough, began returning to television.

I personally found it to be no coincidence that the very first Monday after the news of McMahon’s departure from the creative team broke, nearly every woman on the Raw roster was used on the show in some capacity.

“I’m so glad that it’s getting turned around,” Rousey said after certain changes were brought to her attention. “Triple H has been great towards the women in the company and really believing in us. He’s the whole reason that I was there, ‘cause he believed in me. I really wish that my last run was under Triple H running things and Vince being gone.”

The changes that Triple H has been implementing over the last few months have not gone unnoticed by the fans or the talent themselves.

In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Bayley could not have given The Game a better review, saying she fully trusts that he has the best interests at heart when it comes to her and her character. And that belief was the same when it came to the rest of the locker room.

Even with things seemingly changing for the better, Rousey just doesn’t see herself ever returning to the big stages offered up by WWE.

“My favorite way to perform is during the live shows that aren’t televised. When you just show up and put your hair in a ponytail and go and have fun with your friends and you don’t have to worry about everything that you say and do being dissected by millions of people. That’s when I had the most fun. If I came back, I might have like an ‘Indie Rowdy’ run or something like that.”

For now Ronda Rousey is in the very enviable position of being able to spend as much time with her family as she desires. She’s effectively living the retired life by working at her regenerative ranch, where they raise Wagyu and poultry.

That’s what Ronda enjoys doing with her spare time these days — taking a piece of land that is completely degraded and helping bring it back to life with her animals. Where the work itself is the reward.

Working on her latest book has also given Rousey a love for writing in general and she’s now doing so creatively. She says she’s working on a number of screenplays and comic books, in addition to Our Fight. Which you can pre-order online now and will be available wherever books are sold starting April 2.

You can follow Rick Ucchino on X/Twitter and stay tuned for more in depth interviews with WWE and AEW talent here on Cageside Seats.