My Fight / Your Fight

by Ronda Rousey

  As the week wore on, there was one notable difference from day to day: the worsening smell. Staying in a hotel where there was nowhere for anyone to wash their gis after training in them from morning to night, the scent of body odor became more and more overpowering. Everyone smelled of sweat and mildew, except for me. I smelled like sweat and mildew and the not-quite-overpowering scent of Febreze, which I packed for every camp and used to spray down my gi every night, before hanging the stiff cotton jacket out of the window to dry.

  My relentlessness earned me respect. I was someone that other girls wanted to go up against because they knew I would challenge them. I used that to my advantage. I memorized all their tendencies, all the moves that worked especially well for them, all the techniques they relied on. I didn’t have a coach to do that for me, so I had to do it for myself.

  I watched as a member of the British coaching staff took out his little notebook where he jotted down observations and scribbled out strategies.

  “You don’t need to write up this one,” I wanted to say. “After we’re done out there, this bitch will remember me.”

  Most athletes at the training camps are just trying to get through the day’s workouts. I was trying to leave an impression on every single person in my division. I used every training camp not only to learn about my opponents but to beat the living shit out of them. I wanted to intimidate my opponents. I wanted all the other competitors in my division to leave thinking, “Fuck, this chick’s good. She threw me fifteen times today.” I wanted them to get used to the fact that I would beat them.

  They could tell themselves, “It was just training camp.” But, the next time they saw me, they would remember that I slammed them fifteen times.

  I might not have had the tools at my disposal that my opponents had, but I created advantages of my own.

  YOU WILL NEVER WIN A FIGHT BY RUNNING AWAY

  Judo grew out of Bushido, which is Japanese for the “way of the warrior.” The original Bushido martial art was used in samurai warfare; it was a means to survive. To me, judo is about the fight, and the person who wins the fight ought to be the best fighter.

  But there are many elite-level fighters who don’t fight to lay it all on the line. They fight for points. They will get ahead by a minor score, then spend the rest of the match trying to make it look like they’re fighting when they’re really running away. It’s like fighting a lawyer. It’s not about who’s right or wrong, it’s not about justice, it’s about who can find the loopholes in the rules, and eke out a win.

  I cannot stand points fighters. Points fighting is cowardly. Points fighting is fighting without honor. If you are fighting for points, you’re not fighting at all. Points fighters are just there to compete, even if that means running and hiding the entire match. You should give one hundred percent all of the time.

  It’s not just about winning, it is about how you win. It’s not about winning pretty, it is about winning honorably. I’m not there for competition. I am there for a fight.

  I met Dick IttyBitty at a camp in Chicago in 2002, but he didn’t leave an impression on me. (Knowing this guy, he will still probably take satisfaction in being referenced. However, I can live with the fact that in order to do so, he will have to say, “You know that backstabbing boyfriend who constantly put Ronda down? That’s me! I’m Dick IttyBitty.”) A year later, something had changed. I had been successful at the US Open, but I was still recovering from my knee surgery. The biggest challenge wasn’t actually the physical pain but the mental block. Deep in the back of my mind, I was worried about hurting my knee again. My injury had shown me that I wasn’t as invincible as I thought. My signature throw before I got injured was a left uchi mata. It translates to inner-thigh throw because you plant your right leg, then sweep your left leg between your opponent’s legs, up to their inner thigh, and while turning, throw her over your hip. It’s one of the most effective throws in judo and a solid uchi mata is hard to defend against. My mom noticed that I was favoring my right leg. There were moments in practice where I wouldn’t go in for the throw. Or I tried a less effective throw that didn’t require putting full weight on my right leg. In competition, that hesitation means the difference between being on the podium and being eliminated. My mom called Nick, an acquaintance from her judo days who was running the camp, and told him what she had seen.

  “I’m not going to say anything to her, but she’s going to do one thousand uchi matas over the course of the week,” Nick told my mom. “We’re going to drill her on that with all types of people. Big, little, old, young, guys, girls, anyone who walks into our club. And by the end, she’ll see that if her knee was going to go out again, it would have happened within the first one thousand times.”

  The first day, I took it slow, but my knee held up. By the third day, I started picking up speed, just wanting to get the throws over. By the end of the week, it sounded like a machine gun as I slammed person after person into the blue crash pads. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. When I left Chicago, I had a renewed level of confidence.

  I was used to being around guys in judo, but they always seemed to see me as a sister. Dick was not interested in me in a sisterly way. At first, I didn’t think it was anything, just some flirting at the camp. Then he tried to kiss me. I froze. He laughed off the awkwardness and we kept in touch.

  Dick was persistent (of course, it’s easier to be persistent when you’re sleeping with several other people), and after I left Chicago, he would message me online and text me constantly. I was flattered.

  Two weeks after I had returned from Chicago, my mom and I were headed to practice when she said, “I heard Dick IttyBitty and you hit it off.” Her tone was casual, but I wasn’t fooled; there was nothing casual about this conversation.

  “He’s cool,” I said with a shrug.

  “Really? I’ve heard he’s a dirtbag,” my mom said.

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  My mom gave me a skeptical look. “From what I hear, he sleeps with anything that has a vagina,” my mom said. “Despite looking like he got hit by an ugly stick, it sounds like he gets more ass than a toilet seat. I guess he’s not very selective.”

  “Those are just lies started by these girls who were jealous because he was not interested in them.” I spouted out the explanation he had given me.

  My mom stared at me with a look that said, You can’t be that fucking stupid.

  I slid down in the passenger seat and looked out the window, debating whether opening the door and hurling myself out of a moving vehicle on the freeway would be better than continuing this conversation. “Ronda, you know why a guy in his twenties goes after sixteen-year-old girls? Because they’re dumb enough to believe his bullshit. I would like to believe you’re smarter than that. Seriously, it’s creepy.”

  “OK, enough with the lecture,” I said exasperated. “It’s not like anything happened or is going to. Let’s just change the subject.”

  “Nothing better happen,” my mom said.

  Two weeks later, I moved east to train with Big Jim. I had limited my communications with Dick when I was at my mom’s, but now we started texting more regularly. Then one day, in the middle of practice, he just walked into the club.

  My jaw dropped. My stomach flipped. A little piece of me wanted to break into a happy dance, but the rest of me knew this was not going to go over well.

  Mom was pissed. And the way Big Jim acted around Dick made me realize that he wasn’t a friend of the entire Pedro family. Big Jim had little tolerance for people who said they were training to be elite athletes, but failed to put in the effort. Dick was one of those people. And, while Big Jim would never have admitted it, he had become protective of me. Big Jim wanted him gone as much as my mom did. He made it clear under no circumstance was I to be near Dick.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Big Jim said.

  But Big Jim couldn’t watch us every second. While he was working at the firehouse for the weekend, his youngest son, Mikey,
decided to have a barbecue.

  While Mikey fired up the grill, Dick fired up one of the Jet-Skis. I jumped on the back and we sped off to the middle of the lake, out of clear sight from the shore, we slowed to a stop and Dick leaned over and kissed me again. I froze. A deer in headlights. It felt awkward, but it was also exciting and forbidden.

  Two nights later, with Big Jim still at work, Dick made sure I was drunk and kissed me once more, and I don’t remember much, but I didn’t freeze. Then he went back to Chicago, and all of my focus shifted to the Olympics.

  But we kept in touch, hooking up at various tournaments. We thought we were slick, but it was an open secret.

  In February 2005, we were in Hamburg for the Otto World Cup, where we were both competing. I lost in the preliminaries. I got caught in an armbar and didn’t tap. So the girl dislocated my elbow, and it swelled up the size of a grapefruit. I won that match, but I lost the next one in the first exchange. I entered into repechage, where I won one hard-fought and painful match, before I lost the next match and was eliminated from the tournament. I went back to the hotel, and Dick IttyBitty, who was knocked out of the tournament early, came with me. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I was depressed over losing and hurting my arm and wanted the company. We were lying on the bed, on top of the white comforter, when I heard the whoosh of the door being unlocked by a keycard.

  “What the f—” I didn’t even have time to get the words out when the door flew open and Big Jim was standing in the doorway.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” Big Jim screamed. “You just can’t listen, can you?”

  He had crazy eyes.

  Dick jumped up and tried to explain, but only managed a stutter.

  “You shut the fuck up,” Big Jim said in Dick’s direction, but without taking his eyes off me. Dick fell silent.

  “That’s it,” Big Jim said. “I’m done with you. You’re your mother’s problem now.”

  My stomach lurched into my throat. Big Jim looked at me with disgust and disappointment, then walked away.

  The tournament was over, but was followed by an elite training camp. I had to face Big Jim every day for the next week.

  “What the hell is the problem?” he barked at me during one of the practices. I was having trouble keeping my opponents away when they came in to get a grip or do a throw because of my injured arm.

  “I hurt my elbow,” I said.

  “Stop it,” he said. “Your elbow’s not hurt. You’re too weak to hold them away. You’re not strong enough.”

  Nothing I could say would change his mind, so I did what I always did when Big Jim got mad, I bit my tongue and pushed myself harder. I fought through the pain in silence.

  The pain was nothing compared with what was yet to come. Big Jim told my mom. I spent the entire flight back to Los Angeles overwhelmed with dread. I had never wanted not to see someone so badly. I stood on the curb at LAX, simultaneously looking for my mom’s car and praying she would forget to come. For the first time in my life, my mom was on time to pick me up.

  “Get in,” she said through the open passenger-side window. I braced myself.

  Before we had pulled away from the curb Mom started, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  I opened my mouth.

  “Don’t even answer that,” she said, cutting me off. “I don’t even want to hear whatever you’re going to say, because there’s no answer that could justify such a complete lack of respect, not to mention stupidity.”

  Her voice was raised, but she wasn’t yelling.

  Silence was going to be my best tactic. I looked down at my hands, fighting back tears.

  She turned right onto Sepulveda Boulevard. I was relieved to see traffic was light. The only thing that could make this moment worse would be having it extended by an L.A. traffic jam.

  “Dick Fucking IttyBitty?” my mom asked incredulous. “He’s so amazing that you’re willing to ruin your relationship with your coach, to go against what Big Jim and I explicitly told you? Give me a break. He’ll sleep with anyone. He’s a total sleazeball.”

  The back of my neck got hot. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I rolled down my window, but the fresh air didn’t make any difference. I was jet-lagged. I was hungry. My elbow was throbbing. My coach had thrown me out. I leaned my head back on the beige fabric headrest.

  “Things are going to change,” my mom pressed on. “You don’t know how good you had it, little girl. You’re eighteen, which is technically an adult, even if you act like a spoiled brat. You need to get your act together. The Olympics are over. We made a lot of exceptions and let you get away with a lot of shit, but no more. You’re going to take a year away from judo. You need to finish high school. You need to get a job. You need to start paying rent. It’s time for you to live in the real world. And the real world is going to be a major wakeup call.”

  I stared straight at the windshield, wishing I was anywhere else. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go and I didn’t know what I was going to do. What I did know was that if I was going to pay rent, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be to live in my mom’s house.

  Our house was less than a twenty-minute drive to the airport, and I had never been so glad to pull onto our street. As soon as my mom parked, I threw open the door and stormed in the house and up the stairs to the bedroom I shared with Julia. I slammed the door and threw myself onto the bottom bunk. The sea lion stared out at me from the under-the-sea mural I had painted on our bedroom wall.

  I was devastated to be thrown out of Big Jim’s house. I was humiliated to have him catch me with Dick in my room. I was sorry to have let my mom and Big Jim down. I was furious at them for interfering with my personal life and treating me like I couldn’t make my own decisions.

  Staring up at the slats of the top bunk, I cried hysterically.

  I had spent the first several years of my life unable to communicate because of a speech disorder. Now, a decade and a half later, though I was able to speak, I found myself struggling to convey what I wanted to say. I did not know how to talk to my mom or Big Jim. I felt like when I tried they dismissed me. I didn’t have the confidence to be able to hold my own in an argument. Part of me felt like they would not respect my opinion, but more than that, I wasn’t sure that I had enough experience to make the right decisions for myself. It wasn’t at all about Dick IttyBitty; he was just the catalyst for something that had been boiling within me for years. My life was out of my control. It had been a slow creep, but the feeling had become overwhelming, like standing in a room with no exit as it fills with water.

  I needed to be in charge of my life. I wanted to prove that I did know a few things and that Mom and my coaches should listen to me. But it seemed much easier to move across the country in the middle of the night by myself than to walk into our living room and have a real conversation with my mom.

  I began to plan my “great” escape. Because my dad had died, I was receiving Social Security benefits. The benefits would continue until I turned eighteen or graduated high school, whichever came second. Technically, because I was taking correspondence classes, I was still enrolled in high school. I had just turned eighteen two weeks earlier, so now the checks were coming in my name. I went to the bank, opened my own account, and had the checks directly deposited.

  As soon as I had enough money I bought a plane ticket to upstate New York. I figured I could train at Jim Hrbek’s club while staying with my friend Lillie and her family. Hrbek had been one of the top coaches in the nation dating back to when my mom had been competing. At least, I hoped they would all be OK with my being there once I showed up. I could not risk my mom finding out about my plan, so I told Lillie, but no one else.

  My mom’s anger faded over the next few weeks.

  Then one morning—two weeks after I had returned and less than a week before I was set to leave—my mom woke up and she wasn’t mad at me anymore.

  “Let’s go down to the Promenade,” she suggested.

  �
��OK,” I said, glad not to have her yelling at me.

  We walked the six blocks to the same shopping area I’d gone to the day I ditched school and broke my foot. My mom suggested we check out Armani Exchange. There among the racks of clothes she zeroed in on a white leather jacket.

  “This looks like something you’d like,” my mom said.

  It was an awesome jacket.

  “Try it on,” she urged.

  I slipped it on. It fit me perfectly. I felt amazing.

  “You need to have that,” my mom said.

  I checked the price tag.

  “Please, it’s too much,” I said.

  My mom gave me a hug.

  “You deserve it,” she said. “Besides you were at Big Jim’s for your birthday. We owe you a gift.”

  She brought the jacket up to the cashier, where the sales clerk wrapped it in tissue paper and slipped it into a bag. My eyes stung, my chest ached, my resolve was crumbling. But then I thought about my mom’s complete lack of understanding of me. I wanted to be in control of my life—and I wanted to prove to my mom and Big Jim that I could be in control of my life. I knew I had to go. But I wished she was still mad at me. It would have made leaving easier.

  The night before I left, I waited until my family fell asleep. I packed my bags, jumping at every sound. Then I sat on my bed, waiting for the hours to pass. At 4:55 a.m., I crept out of my room and walked downstairs. I left a note for my mom, explaining that this was something I had to do and I hoped she would understand. Then I walked out the door.

  The world outside was quiet. The sun wasn’t up yet and the air was cool and humid from the ocean a few blocks away. I wanted to pull my new jacket out of my bag, but I was afraid to stop. I threw my navy blue 2004 Olympic team duffle bag over my shoulder and picked up my black duffle bag, carrying it by my side. As if a backward glance would wake my mom, I trained my eyes straight ahead and walked away.