My Fight / Your Fight

by Ronda Rousey

  It was early December when I flew out to upstate New York to help Marina drive her car out to L.A. I want to stop in North Dakota, I told her. So we planned a trip that would take us through the Midwest to Seattle, where we could catch our friend Nate Diaz headline a UFC bout on Fox, before driving down the Pacific coast.

  We piled into Marina’s 2007 Honda Accord, which was gold like mine, but smelled better. Fueled by coffee and beef jerky, we cruised the open road to the sounds of “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC, “Open Road Song” by Eve 6, “Midnight City” by M83, “Universally Speaking” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen.

  It was evening when we arrived in Jamestown, North Dakota. I had not been back since we had moved away. We drove to the white house with green trim where my family had once lived. There was a FOR SALE sign in the front yard. I led Marina around back and discovered the back door was unlocked, just like we had always left it. I stood in the living room in the spot where our couch would have been and thought about the last time I saw my father alive.

  “I want to see my dad,” I told Marina.

  “OK, let’s go.”

  We walked back out to the car, and I called my mom, who told me to go to the funeral home and ask for directions to the cemetery. She told me she would call ahead. There was a man standing outside waiting for me when we arrived.

  “I’ll take you to the cemetery,” he said.

  We got back in our car and followed him. I had only been to the cemetery once, the day my dad was buried. When we pulled up, he didn’t even need to show me where Dad’s grave was, I just knew. I had never even seen his grave after they put the headstone on it, but I knew exactly which one it was.

  I got out of the car. It was dark and was kind of sprinkling. I walked over to where he was buried, and I stood there. Just me and my dad.

  I knelt down on the cold ground and talked to him for a while. I told him I missed him. I told him about the journey I was on. I begged forgiveness for my failures and asked for his guidance. I pressed my palms in the frozen grass and cried. I took my favorite ring—it was silver with a turquoise stone—off my right middle finger and pressed it into the soil next to his headstone. I promised to try to be a good person and do everything I could to make him proud to be my father.

  I don’t know how long I was there, but eventually I stood up and promised to come back someday.

  Marina was at the car waiting for me. She had lost her father a few years before. She looked at me with the deepest understanding, and I knew from the way my best friend hugged me that we had felt the same pain.

  Even with our stop in North Dakota, we made the entire trip from Albany to Seattle in fifty hours. We arrived in Seattle on December 5, the night before the fight press conference. The next morning, I got a call telling me that the UFC was giving me the belt at the pre-fight press conference in a few hours. When I told them I had nothing to wear, they told me to go shopping and they’d reimburse me.

  All right, I thought. I’m going to Barneys, bitches.

  I bought a dress and a pair of awesome shoes and even got myself this big coat that I didn’t even end up wearing.

  Then before I knew it, I was standing backstage at Key Arena and Dana said, “Let’s bring the champ out here.” That was my cue. I sauntered out in front of the room filled with media and up the stairs to the stage, in heels that were squeezing my toes. I was concentrating more on not falling than on basking in the moment.

  “I’m going to make it official,” Dana said. “The first-ever UFC women’s champion, Ronda Rousey.”

  He presented me with the belt. It was big and gold and jewel-encrusted. It was heavier than I thought it would be. And it was mine.

  He then announced I would be making my UFC debut less than three months later against Liz Carmouche and—in what I think came as a surprise to a lot of people who followed the UFC—our fight would be the main event for UFC 157.

  It was only when I got back to the hotel room and threw the belt down on the bed that the weight of everything it signified hit me. I felt giddy and let myself revel in the excitement, but only for a moment. My showdown with Liz Carmouche was less than three months away.

  THERE IS A MOMENT IN A MATCH WHERE IT’S THERE FOR THE TAKING AND IT COMES DOWN TO WHO WANTS IT MOST

  In every match, there is a second when the win is up for grabs and one person reaches out and grabs it. It may happen at the very beginning of a match, when one fighter comes right out swinging and catches the opponent before she’s ready. That opportunity to win might happen in the middle of the match, when your opponent lets up for just a second, to catch her breath or gather her thoughts. Sometimes, the fight is up for grabs at the very end, when you have both been trying your hardest. No matter how tired you are, you have to find a way to dig deep down and make it happen.

  I don’t care what you have thrown at me. I don’t care if I’m tired or injured or trailing in the last second. I’m going to be the person who wants to win the most. I want it so badly that I am willing to die for it. I am going to be the one who summons my last ounce of strength and my last breath to do everything humanly possible to emerge victorious.

  And when the fight is over, I am going to be the one who won.

  The media circus surrounding my fight against Miesha was nothing compared to the frenzy surrounding the lead-up to my fight against Carmouche. No one associated with the UFC could recall a fight drawing more attention. It was, without being dramatic, historic.

  She was not only an 8–2 fighter, but of all the girls I faced in my MMA career—before and since—Liz Carmouche would be the only opponent to break my focus. We were doing a promotional stare-down, where fighters literally adopt a fighting stance and stare into each other’s eyes, a month before the fight. Whenever I do a stare-down, I look into the other person’s eyes and think, I’m going to rip your fucking arm off, and there’s nothing you can fucking do about it. I push out my thoughts through that stare. I want them to be able to read me through my eyes. So there I was face-to-face with Carmouche, channeling all my venom into my gaze, when she looked me straight in the eye and blew me a kiss.

  I had been expecting anything but that. It rattled my brain for a moment.

  Even before that day, I had a huge amount of respect for Liz. There were a lot of girls talking smack about me, but there weren’t a lot of girls lining up to fight me. Carmouche wanted the fight bad. I knew Carmouche would be tough. She was not only a fighter, but she had been in the Marines and did three tours of duty in the Middle East. That takes a strength of character that no other fighter I had faced possessed. She had been in Iraq, where people shoot at you. It’s not like she was going to be intimidated by trash talk. But in that stare-down moment, I knew that against Carmouche I had to be ready for anything.

  Our fight on February 23, 2013, was at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Everything I had dreamed about and everything I had worked for was on the verge of coming true. But I also knew if I didn’t win, it all would have been for nothing.

  On fight night, I was lying on the floor in the locker room resting. One of the undercard fights was playing on the TV, and I happened to glance up just as Urijah Faber got Ivan Menjivar in a standing rear naked choke, which is basically a choke applied from behind.

  I was watching the fight and thinking, Menjivar shouldn’t be leaning on the cage. He’s holding Faber on his back (allowing him to keep choking him). He should stand in the middle of the cage and try to get Faber off. He should focus on untying his legs first, not the hands. Then it fell out of my mind. I didn’t even say it out loud.

  When I exited the locker room, it was as if the rest of the world faded into the background. When I stepped into the cage, my entire world shrank down to 750 square feet.

  We were less than a minute into the fight. Adrenaline was pumping. I was uncharacteristically in a rush, and I forced a throw before I should have. I didn’t set it up. I just went for it. I tried to muscle it and I gave u
p my back. Carmouche capitalized on my mistake, literally jumping on it.

  In that moment, I had a choice. I could either turn so we were both lying on the ground with her on top of me or I could try to stand up. I made a snap decision. I figured it would be better to stand up and give her my back than be on the bottom on the ground with her, because that’s her best spot. But I knew that if I stood up, she’d go for the rear naked choke.

  When I’m in a fight, I see things and analyze them and react to them. It’s not like everything slows down because it’s going fast, but time changes. It is like I am processing ten million pieces of information at once and making multiple decisions simultaneously based on that information.

  I flashed to Menjivar holding Faber on his back, and I knew I needed to get away from the cage wall.

  The easiest thing would have been to lean back and hold her on the cage. It takes a lot of effort to balance somebody in the middle of a cage while they’re trying to rip your head off. Your body wants to do what’s easiest. My body was telling me, to lie down on the ground, or lean up against the cage. But my head was telling me to stand, balance, and untie her legs, while she was balancing on my back.

  I tucked in my chin, cutting off her access to my neck, and defended the choke with my chin. I had to break the grip she had on me with both her hands and feet.

  I was still trying to break the grip her legs had on me when she changed her hold on me from a choke into a neck crank. A neck crank is exactly what it sounds like: one person grabs the other and tries to pull the opponent’s neck past the point where it’s supposed to go. It’s the closest you can come to ripping another person’s head off with your bare hands.

  They don’t have neck cranks in judo. I’d never been in one before. I felt myself losing balance, as she was cranking. She was pulling my neck straight up, and the force was making me step back.

  I had absolutely no emotion then. It was all one hundred percent making observations and decisions.

  Pop. Pop. Pop. My sinuses popped. It felt like my face was imploding.

  I was getting closer to the cage.

  My body, her body, and gravity were pushing me back. No, I have to step forward, I reminded myself. I moved forward toward the middle of the cage.

  Her arms started slipping down over my mouthguard.

  My teeth cut halfway through my upper lip.

  Carmouche’s forearm was beginning to slip; but she’s a badass. She cranked harder, forcing my mouth open. My top teeth were jammed against her arm as I felt my jaw dislocate. She didn’t care if it forced my top row of teeth deep into her forearm, this was her chance. She cranked harder.

  My jaw couldn’t give any more. My neck was forced past its range of motion. I was literally on the verge of having my neck snapped in half.

  I would rather die or be paralyzed than lose, I thought to myself.

  Because not enough was going on, my sports bra started to shift and my boobs were now in danger of falling out in front of thirteen thousand people in the stands and everyone watching on pay-per-view.

  But my mind was prioritizing. It was telling me, Foot, foot, foot. I still have to balance and get her foot off.

  She was cranking my head to the left. I had to throw her off balance. I turned to my left and pushed her foot off to the left. She started to fall and there was a split second of relief where I thought, Finally, she’s off. I can fix my bra now. I was certain my nipple was about to pop out. However, Carmouche missed the memo that this was a bra-fixing moment and kicked me right in the tit.

  I heard the crowd going crazy. I was embarrassed that Carmouche made me look bad. Then I was pissed off that I was made to look bad and that the crowd was cheering about it. I resented them. I could feel my resolve growing with my rage. This girl was not getting off the ground again.

  I was standing in her guard (when you are on your back while grappling and your opponent is between your legs) and risked throwing a few punches to her face. She tried to catch me in a heel hook (leg lock). I back-flipped out of it and started punching her repeatedly in the head. Forcing her to protect her face, I pushed her elbow to the other side of my head and moved to mount her. She reacted in a perfect way that allowed me to swing my legs over her torso and go for her right arm. She grabbed on to it with her left hand, and held on for dear life. I pulled, trying to break it free. She clung tighter.

  I knew the first five-minute round had to be winding down; there could not be more than seconds until the bell. I took one leg off and reset my position, refusing to give up. I could feel her grip breaking. I tugged harder. Her arms slipped apart. There was no escape. With her arm between my legs, I leaned back and cranked. Realizing there was no escape, she tapped.

  Carmouche had lasted four minutes and forty-nine seconds.

  I was still—and now, in my mind, officially—the first women’s champion in the history of the UFC.

  After the fight I realized that I hadn’t even entertained the thought of tapping, even though I could feel my jaw dislocating and knew that my neck could break. The thought of giving up never came into my head. When it comes to fighting, there is never anyone who wants to win more than I do.

  FIGHT FOR EVERY SINGLE SECOND

  You will have times where you are behind. It does not matter if you are getting beat for four minutes and fifty-nine seconds of a five-minute round. You fight for that last single second in the round. You are not trying to win five rounds. You are trying to win fifteen hundred seconds.

  It has to eat at your soul to know that anyone could best you for even the most infinitesimal fragment of time. It is not just about winning the match. It is about being so completely and thoroughly better than anyone else, that even the smallest error, the smallest fraction of time, the smallest thing that doesn’t go your way needs to break your heart. It needs to matter that much to you.

  People will mock you when they see that you are emotionally ravaged by caring so much. But it is exactly that passion that separates you from them; it is that passion that makes you the best.

  To win, you have to be willing to die. If you are willing to die when you fight, if you are giving absolutely everything you have for every single second you are in there, you are going to separate yourself.

  If you win the four minutes and fifty-nine seconds of the round, and at the very last second of the round, the other person just pops you one and the bell rings, you better be pissed that one second of that round escaped you.

  It is not about just winning the round. It is not just about winning the fight. It is about winning every single second of your life.

  The morning after every fight, I meet up with Dana for brunch. It’s a thing we do. The very first time we did that, after my win at UFC 157, he floated the idea of me coaching against my next opponent on a co-ed version of The Ultimate Fighter, a reality TV show that’s the Real World meets Survivor, if the contestants on Survivor beat each other into submission instead of voting each other off. Each season features two teams of aspiring fighters coached by current UFC fighters. A fighter is eliminated each episode, with the final two facing off in a live event. The winner of the show gets a UFC contract.

  The goal for the season Dana was proposing was to basically create an entire women’s division from scratch, using the show to familiarize fans with up-and-coming female fighters.

  After signing me and Carmouche, the UFC had added Miesha Tate and Cat Zingano. Miesha and Cat were scheduled to face off six weeks later, with the winner of that fight being next in line to fight me. As part of the lead-up to that fight, I and the winner of Tate-Zingano would coach on TUF.

  Zingano won by technical knockout. (A TKO is where the fighter isn’t actually knocked unconscious, but a referee, the fight doctor, the fighter’s corner, even sometimes the fighter, makes the decision that the fighter will end up knocked out if the fight isn’t called, so let’s avoid that part in an effort to do less physical damage.)

  Manny, who had gotten me into MMA in t
he first place, was a finalist on the show early on. His fight in the finale was the first MMA match I made a point to sit down and watch. I had been living in Boston and was so excited and nervous for my friend that I spent the entire fight running back and forth on the sectional couch. Manny had lost to Nate Diaz, but Manny’s performance impressed Dana so much that Manny was also given a UFC contract. I had seen how much impact TUF could have on a fighter’s career and understood what a launching point the show could serve as for an entire women’s division.

  I wanted to leave a bigger mark on the sport than just my name first in the record books. I wanted to build a division that would be able to survive after I leave the sport.

  With that goal in mind, I recruited a team of assistant coaches to accompany me, including Edmond, Manny, and Marina, and in July 2013, we were headed to Las Vegas for six weeks to film the show. The pay was not great. We would film thirteen total episodes over six weeks and receive $1,500 a week. My only question about the compensation was: “Are we getting paid the same as the male fighters who have done the show?” I made it very clear: If they’re paying me less than the guys, that’s messed up. But if this is what everybody gets paid, then this deal just needs to get done. I thought everyone was on the same page.

  Three days before filming was scheduled to begin, unbeknownst to me, Darin and my lawyer called the UFC and said, “If Ronda doesn’t get twenty thousand dollars an episode, she’s not doing the show.”

  Dana White does not play these kinds of games.

  I had spent the morning running errands in preparation for spending the next month and a half living in Las Vegas. I was just pulling into my garage at the house on Venice Beach that I had just rented when Dana White called. I put the brand-new black BMW X6 M that the UFC had recently gifted me into park. (“I can’t have one of my champions driving around in a busted-ass Honda,” Dana had said.)