To say that Ronda Rousey was devastated after losing to Holly Holm at UFC 193 would be the understatement of the year. ESPN The Magazinejust released their new feature on Rousey written by Ramona Shelburne, who spent some time with Rousey on the day after Thanksgiving. And it’s clear that, when Shelburne met up with Rousey at her home in California, she was still very upset about losing to Holm.
In the interview, Rousey admits that she took a punch in the first round of her fight with Holm that basically took her off her game for the remainder of the bout. She also reveals that she feels like she’s “grieving the death of the person” she could have become if she had been able to continue her amazing winning streak. And at one point, she even talks about how sick she got during a post-fight trip to Texas that she took with her boyfriend Travis Browne. To hear her explain it, her body rejected the idea of her losing a fight.
“I kind of just slept a lot and ate fast food,” she tells Shelburne. “First I was so sick I couldn’t eat anything. Then I just slept and pooped in the woods. I used a whole roll of toilet paper in one day. Physically, my body was refusing its own failures. It was, like, sick of itself. Expelling itself. Like all the skin came off my face. My whole body flushed it out.”
Rousey also talks about the inevitable rematch with Holm, the one everyone wants to see. She won’t be able to take part in it for at least six months or so. But Rousey readily admits that the fight will basically determine whether or not she ever fights again.
“I guess it’s all going to be determined by what happens in the rematch,” she says. “Everything is going to be determined by that. Either I’ll win and keep going, or I won’t and I’ll be done with everything.”
You can read the entire ESPN The Mag story here. It’s (obviously) very depressing, but Shelburne does a nice job of capturing where Rousey is at in her life right now and illustrates just how dark it truly is.
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[via ESPN]
