My Fight / Your Fight

by Ronda Rousey

  I pressed her on the fence and heard her breathing. It was wheezing and rattled. She was breathing out like she was deflating with her breaths.

  I knew that she wasn’t there. She was out on her feet. She never knew what happened to her in the third round. She was broken down, and it was time to go in and finish. I wanted to break her standing, so she’d be easier to submit on the ground. I went in for one last throw and we tumbled to the mat. Less than a minute into the round, I flipped her onto her back and grabbed her left arm. She had no strength left to fight. I took her arm, and with one leg across her chest and the other behind her neck, I leaned back and arched my hips. She didn’t know exactly where she was. She didn’t know exactly what was happening, but she knew that she was in an armbar, and it was time to give up.

  People learn to tap quickly after you’ve destroyed one of their arms before.

  Afterward, there were people who thought she challenged me in that fight, because it went into the third round. But I had dragged that fight out intentionally, wanting to punish Miesha for as long as I possibly could. When I had thoroughly defeated her, when I had crushed her all the way down to the bottom of her soul, then I went for the armbar.

  Miesha was beat and exhausted. I had never felt better in my life.

  After all that had gone down between us, after all the shit she instigated on TUF, Miesha got to her feet and extended her hand. I viewed her gesture as merely an effort to save face in front of the crowd. Taking her hand before receiving an apology for everything she had done would disrespect everyone I cared about whom she had wronged. I stared at her blue glove for a second.

  My handshake is more than just for show, I thought. It was not an issue of sportsmanship. It was an issue of principle.

  I turned away, relishing the win. As boos rained down, I walked toward the only thing that mattered: the embrace of my family.

  Ahead of the fight, the UFC had approached me about taking another fight less than two months later—assuming, as we all did, that I would beat Miesha. It would mark the quickest turnaround for a champion to successfully defend the title in the organization’s history.

  I had agreed.

  PREPARE FOR THE PERFECT OPPONENT

  Never hope for mistakes from your opponents. Assume they are perfectly prepared. Assume they make weight. Assume they never get tired. Assume all their reactions will be the correct ones. Expect that they will have their eyes open, ready to take advantage of any mistakes that you make.

  All of my opponents hope that when we face each other, I will do something wrong that they will be able to capitalize on. I assume that the most perfect version of my opponent that has ever existed is going to be in front of me when we meet. I expect that she will not make a single error, and so I will have to lead her into a trap, where the correct reaction is exactly what I am waiting to capitalize on.

  I never allow any opponent to come out better than I expect her to. That’s why my fights end so dominantly.

  The movies, the money, the fame, the recognition, all of it comes from me staying a champion, not from having been the champion. I could lose every single thing that I have worked for every single time that I get in the Octagon. That’s why I train harder every time. Every fight, I have even more on the line. Every fight, I seek to challenge myself a little more. That’s why I accepted the fight against Sara McMann.

  I had been out of the cage for ten months between my fight with Carmouche and my fight with Tate, and the time away took its toll. I felt just a little bit slower, my timing not as sharp, the cage a tiny bit more unfamiliar. I didn’t need to be perfect to beat Miesha Tate, but I expect perfection of myself.

  Like everything else that comes with fighting, or success in general, most people have no idea what goes into getting to that moment in the spotlight. For me, it starts six weeks out. Fight Night comes after the preparations are done. The moment that everyone sees is merely the finale of the six-week camp that ensures I am at my absolute peak when I walk into the cage.

  The day after my fight with Tate, I asked Marina about the commotion in my suite before the fight. She recounted what she had seen: Darin had come into the room, reeking of booze, wearing the same clothes as the previous night, and tried to start a fistfight. That was the final straw. A few days later, I texted Darin. “We have a lot of things to discuss,” I wrote. Darin replied that he was out of town. Edmond said he would handle the situation, and I turned my attention back to what really mattered.

  With the McMann fight only weeks away, we went straight into camp. I loved it. I felt like we hadn’t had our best camp possible ahead of UFC 168 and now we had an opportunity to do it all over.

  Camp is a countdown, a doomsday clock for my opponent. From the first day of camp until the announcer declares “And still champion, Rowdy Ronda Rousey,” every second of my life is focused on fighting. I pick up my training. I follow my diet.

  I approach each camp the exact same way, no matter who my opponent is. If I’m at my best, it doesn’t matter who is across the cage from me on fight night.

  Week 6

  Starting in Week 6, I start imagining every imaginable way I will win the fight. By the time it gets to Fight Night, I have played out thousands of ways I could win in my head.

  The first week of camp I get my heaviest. I try to put on weight in the form of muscle. Even when I’m training, I don’t lift weights or do a bunch of bench presses. But during the first week of camp, I shadowbox with one or two pound weights. My body is really well conditioned, and I put on muscle so fast that by the end of the week, I look jacked.

  On Monday evenings, now through the end of camp, I swim. It brings me back to the youth club swimming I did as a kid, when my dad declared I’d be a champion. The quiet time in the pool gives me time to think by myself and keeps my shoulders loose and flexible for boxing.

  Week 6 is the only week of camp where I don’t strictly follow a diet. I still eat healthy stuff, but I eat a lot of food. In the morning, I have a breakfast bowl.

  * * *

  BREAKFAST BOWL (FROM MY MIKE DOLCE MEAL PLAN)

  2 tbsp oat bran (dry measure)

  2 tbsp chia seeds

  2 tbsp hemp seeds

  1/2 cup blueberries

  4 chopped strawberries

  1/4 cup raisins

  1 tbsp almond butter

  1 tbsp agave

  Cinnamon (to taste)

  Boil one cup of water and combine with bran, berries, and raisins. Mix in seeds and cinnamon. Add agave and almond butter. (You can add a little more water if it seems too thick.)

  If I’m in camp, I might sub the agave for Stevia or I might take the almond butter out.

  * * *

  Even when I’m not in camp, I crave that bowl every morning. It is part of my daily process. On the rare occasion when I’m out of an ingredient and I can’t make one exactly right, it feels like my universe is wrong.

  Aside from breakfast, it’s pretty much my Armenian barbecue week. Armenian barbecue is basically beef, chicken, rice, and vegetables, but mostly meat. It’s heavy, hearty, healthy stuff. And there’s borsch. Lots of borsch, which is cabbage beet soup that tastes like angel bathwater.

  We had decided to train at home the entire camp as we prepared for McMann. I had been on the road so much that year that all I wanted was to be home. But there have been times when I felt I needed to change my environment. Ahead of the Carmouche fight, we headed up to train in the altitude and the quiet of Big Bear. It’s easier to change your mind-set if you change your environment. It’s hard to sit on the couch and then suddenly be like, “Oh I’m in camp now.”

  No matter where I am, I end that first week of camp feeling strong and energized.

  Week 5

  During Week 5, I start my diet. Right before my fight with Tate, I realized I needed to find a better way to make weight. After a decade, deprivation dieting was taking its toll. Not only was it a super-unhealthy approach, but it didn’t work. I reached out to
Mike Dolce, who serves as a nutritionist for a number of fighters in the UFC. It was worth it. For the first time in a camp, I never felt weak. (While Dolce works with fighters, his diet is really for anyone. He has written several Dolce Diet cookbooks, and I highly recommend them.) I worked with him for the month before UFC 168, and I have used him for every camp since.

  Starting in Week 5, Dolce sends me a new diet every week. But the plan is flexible. Every morning, I weigh in. I’ll text my weight to him and then he’ll text me back, “OK, change this meal today” or “You’re doing great.” He changes things up according to what he thinks I need nutritionally as well as to get my weight where it needs to be.

  When I started working with Dolce, my entire relationship with food changed. I no longer had to figure out what the right thing to eat was. I no longer doubted myself and the decisions that I was making. When I started working with Dolce, I felt guilty for being so full all the time. Then one day during the McMann camp, it clicked: Oh, I’m supposed to be full. For a long time, the feeling of being full and the feeling of guilt were synonymous to me. But now, I’ve stopped feeling bad about it.

  Communication is the key with Dolce. I keep in constant contact to let him know how my body is responding to the diet, how I am feeling, and he makes the necessary tweaks. Dinners involve things like chili or scrambles. If I say “I ate so much that I’m so full after dinner,” he might tell me that I can skip my before-bed snack. In between meals, I get things like fruit, nuts, or yogurt with chia seeds. I rarely cook, but Marina is my roommate and helps make my food or cuts the ingredients up and puts them in Ziploc bags so even my culinarily-challenged ass can whip something up.

  I box with Edmond. I grapple by doing either judo with my longtime training partner Justin Flores or wrestling with Martin Berberyan or by doing Brazilian Jiujitsu with brothers Ryron and Rener Gracie. Each partner is different. I have known Justin since I was an eleven-year-old kid doing judo and he used to babysit me and try to sit and fart on me. Martin ran wrestling at SK Golden Boys and is a three-time Olympian and a world medalist. He is quiet and calm. Rener and Ryron are outgoing and fun. They have a very different ground game from me, and I love to trade ideas with them. The varying personalities and styles balance each other out.

  Depending on my opponent, Edmond brings in outside sparring partners. If I’m going up against a striker, he’ll bring in girls who are world champions in boxing or kickboxing.

  He starts calling other coaches and asking, “Hey, do you have anyone around this size and skill level?”

  But if my challenger is a grappler, he mostly only has me go up against guys. McMann had won an Olympic silver medal in wrestling, so in preparation for her, I grappled and wrestled a lot. But it’s also a matter of excelling where your opponent is weakest so you can capitalize on those vulnerabilities.

  Monday to Friday, I work out twice a day. I leave my house at nine in the morning to be at practice by ten, work out for an hour and a half, shower, sleep, and repeat. I basically do whatever Edmond thinks I should be doing. I really leave a lot of planning up to him and just do what he tells me. Saturdays, I only have MMA sparring. Then on Sundays, I rest. Outside of camp, I’ll train every single day, but in camp, I really rest. I get home exhausted at around eight p.m. I make my food, hang out with Mochi, and then read before bed.

  I used to think I had to be miserable to earn success. But I’ve lost that need and realized that it’s very old-fashioned. Boxing great Mike Tyson said “a happy fighter is a dangerous fighter.” I think he’s right. I’m happier—and more dangerous—now than I’ve ever been.

  Week 4

  In Week 4, we start to pick it up. Between practices, I like to nap. I used to get a temporary apartment during camp, but then I just started blocking off a room at a nearby hotel three days a week for the last month of camp. I rest at the hotel between workouts, but go home to sleep in my own bed at night.

  I am almost totally isolated from the outside world during camp, emerging only to do media. I have no energy to see family or friends. I don’t dread any part of the process, even the hardest parts. I just take a deep breath and focus on performing the best I can. I’ve grown to embrace delayed gratification so much that I even appreciate going through the most challenging parts. I collapse in bed every night, proud of the work I’ve done and savoring the hours of rest I’ve earned.

  During camp, Edmond is the boss. It’s my coach’s job to make me do things I don’t want to do, especially when it comes to preparing me for a fight. I don’t argue with him, because if I get to a point where I get an attitude that “I don’t feel like doing this” or “I’m not going to do it because I’m badass,” then the whole machine falls apart.

  This is also when we begin getting into the mental aspect of the fight and the game plan against my opponent. We look at her tendencies, anticipating how she might try to approach me and what I can do to throw her off her game. We analyze her strengths and weaknesses and look at ways to exploit any holes. The goal is to create a situation where I feel completely in control and she feels completely overwhelmed.

  It was during Week 4 of the McMann camp that I started dropping everybody in the gym with a liver shot, a knee or punch directly to the liver. The danger of a liver shot is the pain is so intense it incapacitates a person temporarily. One clean liver shot, and you’re done.

  Weeks 5 and 4 are hard, but Week 3 is the hardest.

  Week 3

  Week 3 is “Hard Week.” Week 3 is the peak of the training camp. It’s the week where I do the most of everything. It’s the week where I hit the bag more. It’s the week where I hit the mitts more. It’s the week where I have the most sparring. It’s the week where I go the most rounds in practice, where I fight the most minutes. Sparring is the most important part, because it’s the closest thing to an actual fight. The mitt work is tactical, but when you’re sparring, you’re fighting. A full-length championship fight can go five five-minute rounds, so Edmond has me do six rounds. That way, I know, if it ever came down to it, I could go five rounds in the Octagon and keep firing.

  We don’t have a set schedule to watch video of my opponent’s past fights, but we are definitely watching film three weeks out. We’re analyzing what she does, breaking her down, looking for patterns, and identifying opportunities.

  By the end of Week 3, I feel completely torn down. Literally, when I’m not training during Week 3, I just lie on the mat or floor or bed or anywhere flat, exhausted and think, Fuck. Week 3 pushes me mentally to the edge, which spills over into Week 2.

  Week 2

  In Week 2, two-week-itis hits. It’s when I get my most nervous. Before Week 2, the fight seems like it’s far off. Three weeks is close to a month, and a month is a long time. But two weeks out, it starts getting real. The fight is about to happen. Two weeks out is when I’m at my most emotional. I cry over everything, even more than I usually cry over everything.

  My body is the most torn down, because I just finished “Hard Week,” and I’m entering “Speed Week.”

  Week 2 is Speed Week, because it’s all about short rounds, just being fast, working on footwork, bringing my speed and explosiveness back, things like that. Week 2 is where I’m getting very, very light. We cut down on the sparring and make the rounds very short. It’s all about being quick the whole week.

  By the end of the week, we do a lot of the playful stuff. Edmond starts bringing out things that are like games, throwing and catching the balls to keep my eyes sharp. He cuts pool noodles in half and whacks me with them. He flicks towels at my head and makes me dodge them. Week 2 is when he gets really creative. He tries to make me really happy during that week. He even asks me to wear bright colors, because he thinks it lightens the mood. Once I get over crying for the first few days, Week 2 is actually the most fun week.

  As the fight gets closer, I get tired of being nervous. By the time I’m actually leaving for the fight, I’m just so excited to do what I am the best in the world at
that I’m not even nervous anymore. Now, I’m just impatient, eager to enter the Octagon and handle business.

  Fight Week

  Fight Week is the final week of camp, the countdown to Fight Night. I fight on Saturdays.

  On Monday night, I pack all my stuff, which is more throwing everything I can possibly think I will need in my bags and inevitably forgetting something.

  On Tuesday morning, we all meet at the gym. If my fight is in Vegas, we drive. We meet at the gym and leave late morning in an automotive caravan. It’s Edmond, Martin, Marina, Justin, me, and a few other people from the gym. I like the road trip, but when I’m going to Vegas for a fight, I don’t want to drive. I slip into the passenger seat and someone else takes the wheel.

  In the days ahead of the fight, I get artificially heavy. A week out, I’ll start eating a bunch of salt and drinking two gallons of water a day. When you water load, you put as much water in your body as possible, and get super, super-duper hydrated. Your body gets used to putting out so much water, that even after you cut the salt, your body keeps flushing the water out for a few more days. I bloat up from the water. My weight is usually 146 when I leave in the morning. By the time I get to Vegas, I’m usually five pounds heavier, because I’m so full of water. As we drive, I’m drinking constantly. At every exit, I’m like, “I gotta pee. I gotta pee. I gotta pee.”

  We listen to music the whole way there, and as we pull into Vegas, I blast Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” as a prelude of what’s to come.

  When we get into Vegas, the first stop is the UFC offices. I check in with them, usually sign some posters or something. Dolce meets me and checks my weight. From there, I check into the hotel. Dolce has me eat. I chill out for a bit. I’ll do one workout in the evening just to sweat and lose weight, then eat whatever Dolce tells me to eat. Then go to bed.

  Fight Week Wednesday, I have a lot of media. It’s when they do all the little media snippets. We film the prefight interviews that people see coming up on the big screen before we walk out. It’s my least favorite interview to do ever, because they try to feed you things to say and it pisses me off.