Ronda Rousey
Ronda Jean Rousey (/ˈraʊzi/;[12] born February 1, 1987) is an American professional wrestler, actress, and former judoka and mixed martial artist.[13] She is best known for her tenure in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and WWE.
Ronda Rousey
Rowdy
The Baddest Woman On The Planet
1
- AnnMaria De Mars (mother)
5 ft 7 in (170 cm)
135 lb (61 kg; 9 st 9 lb)
Featherweight (2010–2011)
Bantamweight (2012–2016)
66 in (168 cm)[1]
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Venice, California, U.S.
Glendale Fighting Club
Gokor Hayastan Academy
SK Golden Boys
2010–2016 (MMA)
14
12
3
9
2
2
3
3
3
0
Ronda Rousey
134 lb (61 kg)[5]
She was the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in judo by winning bronze at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Rousey began her mixed martial arts (MMA) career with King of the Cage in 2011. She soon joined Strikeforce, becoming their last Women's Bantamweight Champion until its acquisition by UFC.[14] Rousey was part of the company's first-ever female fight at UFC 157, was their inaugural Women's Bantamweight Champion, and held the record for most UFC title defenses (6) by a female, until being surpassed by Valentina Shevchenko in 2022.[15][16][17][18] Rousey retired from MMA in 2016 and was the first female fighter inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2018.[19]
Rousey began a career in professional wrestling in 2018, signing with WWE,[20] and debuted at WrestleMania 34. She won the Raw Women's Championship at that year's SummerSlam, and headlined WWE's only all-women's pay-per-view Evolution, in which she defended the title. Rousey lost the title in the first-ever women's WrestleMania main event at WrestleMania 35. Rousey returned at the 2022 Royal Rumble, winning the women's Royal Rumble match. That year, she would win the SmackDown Women's Championship twice, making her an overall three-time women's world champion in WWE. She became the eighth Women's Triple Crown Champion when she won the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship with Shayna Baszler. Rousey and Baszler also unified the WWE and NXT Women's Tag Team Championships. After leaving WWE in October 2023, she began wrestling on the independent circuit.
Rousey is the only woman to be the champion in both the UFC and WWE as well as the only woman to headline a pay-per-view event in both companies.[21] She was voted the best female athlete of all time in a 2015 ESPN fan poll, and Fox Sports described her as "one of the defining athletes of the 21st century."[22][23][24][25] Rousey has also appeared in films, including The Expendables 3 (2014),[26] Furious 7 (2015),[27] and Mile 22 (2018),[28] and published her autobiography My Fight / Your Fight in 2015.[29]
Early life[edit]
Ronda Jean Rousey was born in Riverside, California[30][31] on February 1, 1987, the youngest of three daughters of AnnMaria De Mars (née Waddell) and Ronald John Rousey,[32] after whom she was named.[33] Her mother, a decorated judoka, was the first American to win a World Judo Championship (in 1984, as AnnMaria Burns). Rousey is of English, Trinidadian, Venezuelan and Canadian ancestry.[34] One of her maternal great-grandfathers, Alfred E. Waddell, was a Trinidadian doctor who emigrated to Canada and became one of the first Black physicians in North America, while a maternal great-grandmother was born in Caracas, Venezuela.[35][36] Her stepfather is an aerospace engineer.[37] When Rousey was eight years old, her biological father, who had broken his back while sledding with his kids, died by suicide.[33][38] AnnMaria pursued a PhD in educational psychology at the University of California, Riverside as her daughters grew up.[33][39]
For the first six years of her life, Rousey struggled with speech and could not form an intelligible sentence due to apraxia, a neurological childhood speech sound disorder.[40] This speech disorder was attributed to being born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. When Rousey was three years old, her mother and father moved from Riverside, California, to Jamestown, North Dakota, to obtain intensive speech therapy with specialists at Minot State University.[41][42] Rousey dropped out of high school and later earned her GED.[43] She was raised between Jamestown and Southern California, retiring from her judo career at 21 and starting her MMA career at 22 when she realized that she did not want to spend her life in a conventional field of work.[44]
Olympic judo career[edit]
Rousey began judo with her mother at the age of 11. Rousey trained with her mother until she was 13, when she accidentally broke her mother's wrist.[45] At 17, Rousey was the youngest judoka to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Rousey lost in her first match to eventual silver medalist Claudia Heill in the 63 kg bracket. Also that year, Rousey won a gold medal at the 2004 World Judo Juniors Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
In April 2006, she became the first female U.S. judoka in nearly 10 years to win an A-Level tournament as she went 5–0 to claim gold at the Birmingham World Cup in Great Britain. Later that year, the 19-year-old won the bronze medal at the 2006 Junior World Championships, becoming the first U.S. athlete to win two Junior World medals.[46]
In February 2007, Rousey moved up to 70 kg where she ranked as one of the top three women in the world. She won the gold medal at the 2007 Pan American Games and the silver medal at the 2007 World Judo Championships.[47]
In August 2008, Rousey competed at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. She lost her quarterfinal to the Dutch ex-world champion Edith Bosch but qualified for a bronze medal match through the repechage bracket. Rousey defeated Annett Boehm by Yuko to win a bronze medal (Judo offers two bronze medals per weight class). With the victory, Rousey became the first American to win an Olympic medal in women's judo since its inception as an Olympic sport in 1992.[48][49] Rousey ultimately compiled a competition judo record of 56 wins and 19 losses.[50]
Rousey retired from judo at 21 after the Olympics. After winning her Olympic medal, Rousey shared a studio apartment with a roommate in Venice Beach, California and worked three jobs as a bartender and cocktail waitress to support herself and her dog.[51]
Mixed martial arts career[edit]
Training[edit]
When Rousey started learning judo, her mother took her to judo clubs run by her old teammates. Rousey went to North Hollywood, Los Angeles Hayastan MMA Academy, which was run by Gokor Chivichyan, where she trained with fellow future MMA fighters Manny Gamburyan and Karo Parisyan. According to Rousey, Hayastan practiced "a more brawling style of judo versus the more technical Japanese style." Rousey trained mostly with males bigger than she was and often got frustrated and cried when she got thrown and could not throw somebody. "Probably from 2002 to 2005 I cried every single night of training," Rousey remarked.[45]
Rousey trained closely with Gamburyan. After Rousey injured her knee when she was 16, Gamburyan volunteered to open the gym every afternoon and work with her personally. Back in 2004, her teammates thought Rousey "would kill these girls" in MMA, but also thought she was "too pretty to get hit in the face" and should keep doing judo. While Gamburyan and Parisyan went into MMA, Rousey stuck with judo but remained in touch with MMA through them. The first MMA fight she took an interest in watching was Manny Gamburyan versus Nate Diaz in The Ultimate Fighter finale. Rousey stated she never got as excited watching judo or any other sport. After the 2008 Olympics the following year, she decided to start MMA through Team Hayastan.[45]
Rousey also trained at the Glendale Glendale Fighting Club, to which she was introduced by Gamburyan and other Hayastan teammates. She started training under her long-term MMA coach Edmond Tarverdyan at Glendale Fighting Club.[52]
She trained in Jiu Jitsu at Dynamix MMA with Henry Akins from 2011 to 2014[53] and went on to train with Ryron Gracie and Rener Gracie of Gracie Academy,[54] as well as B.J. Penn of Art of Jiu-Jitsu.[55] In wrestling, Rousey trained under the Romanian American Leo Frîncu.[2]
Early career (2010–2011)[edit]
Rousey made her mixed martial arts debut as an amateur on August 6, 2010. She defeated Hayden Munoz by submission due to an armbar in 23 seconds.[56]
She entered the quarterfinals of the Tuff-N-Uff 145 lbs women's tournament on November 12, 2010, and submitted promotional veteran Autumn Richardson with an armbar in 57 seconds.[57]
Rousey faced Taylor Stratford in the Tuff-N-Uff tournament semi-finals on January 7, 2011, and won by technical submission due to an armbar in 24 seconds. She then announced plans to turn pro and was replaced in the tournament.[58] Rousey has a 3–0 record in amateur MMA competition, and the combined duration of all her amateur fights is under 2 minutes.[44]
Rousey made her professional mixed martial arts debut on March 27, 2011, at King of the Cage: Turning Point. She submitted Ediane Gomes with an armbar in 25 seconds.[56][59]
Rousey faced kickboxing champion Charmaine Tweet in an MMA bout at Hard Knocks Fighting Championship: School of Hard Knocks 12 on June 17, 2011, in Calgary, Canada.[60] She submitted Tweet with an armbar in 49 seconds.[61][62]
Professional wrestling career[edit]
Background[edit]
Rousey is a professional wrestling fan. She, Shayna Baszler, Jessamyn Duke, and Marina Shafir have dubbed themselves "The Four Horsewomen," a play on The Four Horsemen professional wrestling stable, with the blessing of members Ric Flair and Arn Anderson.[128]
