15 Things You Didn't Know About Ronda Rousey

Image via Complex Original

Unlike Aaron Rodgers, who somehow abstains from sex with Olivia Munn on the night before a game, Rousey says she tries to get it in as much as possible before she steps in to the octagon. 

“For girls, it raises your testosterone, so I try to have as much sex as possible before I fight. I don’t put out Craigslist ads or anything, but if I got a steady I’m going to be like ‘Yo, fight time is coming up.’”

To each their own!

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Asphyxiated by her umbilical during birth, Rousey’s brain was damaged from the resulting lack of oxygen flow to her brain. As a result, Rousey was unable to say a single word until she was six years old. If you wonder why she’s perfected the art of intimidation, being forced to express herself nonverbally early in life might be the catalyst. 

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It sounds odd, and frankly, pretty gross, but chowing down on foods high in salt for seven days straight allows Rousey to become bloated. If this still doesn’t sound like a great plan for someone about to fight another human being—stay with us. When she completely cuts salt out of her diet following the week of saltiness, her body then expels all the fluids it possibly can, allowing Rousey to quickly get down to her fighting weight. 

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In Febuary of 2014, Rousey took out Sarah McMann at UFC 170 in just a minute and six seconds (which compared to some of her more recent fights seems like an eternity). Rousey's guaranteed contract for that fight was just $55,000, though it doubled when Rousey won. Still, $110,000 for the UFC’s most popular fighter? Pocket change compared to the millions Floyd Mayweather made when he took on Manny Pacquiao this summer. 

To supplement its somewhat lackluster pay, the UFC provides its fighters with “bonuses,” like when they bought Rousey a BMW X6 M so she wouldn’t have to drive around in her Honda Accord anymore. Bonus payments and pay-per-view revenue shares certainly work their way into the payment equation, but $55,000 for a fighter like Rousey seems absurd. 

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Rousey’s coffee addiction must be strong, because when she was 14, she and her friend Jackie would challenge random men to fight. And put money on it. 

“"I loved frappuccinos," Rousey told Sports Illustrated. "Me and my friend, Jackie, after school we would walk over to the promenade. Jackie was like my Paul Heyman. She was like, 'I bet my girl right here could beat you up for 10 dollars, or five dollars, or whatever.' And some guy would be like, 'Whatever, I'll take that bet.'"

Unbeknownst to the men she was challenging, Rousey had been practicing judo for three years already. She’d take them down with a choke or an arm bar, then take their money and go cop some frappuccinos. 

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When she was 11, Rousey took up martial arts—judo—which her mother had once medaled in at the Olympics. By the time she was 16, she had climbed to no. 1 in the country, and the pressure of that ranking started to wear on her. Making weight ahead of her fights became one of Rousey’s biggest stressers, and a negative image of her body (thick and muscular) led Rousey to become bulimic. 

“Whenever people talk about how cocky and arrogant I am, it blows me away, because I worked so hard to develop self-confidence,” she told the New Yorker.

Rousey now holds fundraisers for services that help people with eating disorders.

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If you passed Ronda Rousey on the street, chances are you’d recognize her immediately. The downside of this fame is that it has become a deterrent for her dating life. Rousey said she tried using Tinder, but had to use an alter ego, Brynn Campbell, to try and hide her identity. It didn’t work. Fortunately, she’s found a man to spend her off-days with. 

“The only person I’m making out with is my dog,” she told Sports Illustrated. 

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There's a definitive part of Ronda Rousey’s life that doesn’t get talked about much, and for good reason. It’s an understandably sensitive topic with an awful outcome, but in 1995, Rousey’s father Ron took his own life.  

Ron broke his back when he slammed his sled into a snow bank while out with Ronda and her sister. When surgery to repair his spine did little to stop the pain, Ron discovered he had Bernard-Souiler Syndrome, a disease that prevented his body from forming blood clots. He was told he would ultimately become paralyzed and be forced to use a ventilator just to stay alive. Instead of living out the next few years in that condition, Ron tragically opted to take his own life. 

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When Rousey appeared in Sports Illustrated’s iconic “Swimsuit Issue” in February, she became the first MMA fighter to ever grace the magazine’s pages. 

“I purposely tried to get a little bit heavier for the SI issue so I was a little bit curvier and not in top fight shape look but the look at which I feel I’m the most attractive,” Rousey told For The Win.

Rousey also appeared completely nude in ESPN’s “Body Issue” in 2012. 

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You’d think that after arm-barring someone in 30 seconds, your first thought as you are officially announced the winner would be something along the lines of “Yeah, I’m pretty incredible.” Not for Rousey. Nope. She’s much more concerned with something else. 

“I have a phobia about camel toe,” Rousey told Rolling Stone. “I swear to God, every time after I win, even before I take my mouth guard out, I pull my shorts down, and it's because I have a phobia of high-def camel toe, people zooming in on the Internet and everything. It's always, first thing, fix the camel toe!"

Priorities, people. 

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One of the main plot lines in the bro-tastic Entourage movie that dropped this past June was the “love story” between Rousey, who was playing herself, and Turtle, played by Jerry Ferrara. In an effort to apologize to Rousey after offending her, Turtle takes on Rousey in the Ocatagon. Ferrera apparently wanted to perform all the fight stunts himself, until Rousey told him she’d probably end up breaking a part of his body.

“Ronda talked him out of it,” Kevin Connolly, who plays “E,” told Dan Patrick. “She was like, ‘Yeah Jerry, you could do it, but you probably shouldn’t. I’ve broken dude’s ribs doing this. Why don’t you have the double do it.’”

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When you’re binge-watching a show called “Ancient Aliens,” you’ve probably got an alien addiction. That what Rousey has been doing of late, apparently to satisfy her deep thirst for alien knowledge. 

“Sometimes at the end of the day I just need to sit down and learn about some aliens. For some reason it makes me feel good, and I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but I love me some aliens,” Rousey told Fortune.

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Rousey has become known for her arm bar finishing move—a move that hyperextends her opponent’s elbow while stretching the arm’s ligaments and grinding away at the bone. You can see why most of her opponents that get put into the move tap out almost immediately. 

The arm bar, which is called “juji gatame” in judo, is such a deadly weapon for Rousey that she used it to win all eight of her initial MMA bouts. It wasn’t until she took down McMann with a knee to the liver that she won a fight with something other than her signature move. 

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As we mentioned before, Rousey began her career following in her mother’s footsteps, fighting competitively in judo. Her abilities led her to the 2004 Olympics in Athens when she was just 17 years old, the youngest “judoka” in the entire games. 

Though she did not medal, Rousey returned to the Olympics in 2008, where she took home the bronze medal, becoming the first American in history to take home a medal in women’s judo. 

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As a coach in the 18th season of Spike’s The Ultimate Fighter, Rousey developed a deep bond with three of her fighters, Jessamyn Duke, Shayana Bazler and Marina Shafir. The four would become dubbed “The Four Horsemen,” and Rousey, who was already living with Shafir, invited both Bazler and Duke to come live with them in Los Angeles three months after filming.

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