Cape Town - Ronda Rousey suffered her first loss as a mixed martial artist last November in Australia, a loss that was a tough pill to swallow.
Appearing on ‘The Ellen Degeneres’ show for the second time on Tuesday, the former bantamweight champion revealed some information about the fight and what went on mentally after the loss according to Nick Strickland from MMALatestNews.com.
“I got clipped in the first exchange so I was knocked out on my feet like the first time I got hit. It’s hard to really know what’s going on. In that first hit I cut up my whole mouth and I knocked my teeth loose. Guys fight for five-minute rounds, they are teeing off on each others faces the whole time and nothing like that happens. It’s just destiny, it had to go down that way," said Rousey.
"It was weird. I had no perception of… I felt like almost I couldn’t see. Like, I could see but I couldn’t tell how far my hand was from my face or how far she was from me. When you sit and you’re not moving, you’re still aware of where your body is. That’s like a part of your brain telling you where you are in space. It was like that kind of turned off. I was swinging blindly. I knew she was out there, but, like i really don’t remember most of it.”
Holly Holm faces Miesha Tate, an old foe of Rousey’s, on March 5 at UFC 196 and “Rowdy” is hoping for Holm to win so that she (Rousey) can be the one to hand Holm her first loss in the rematch later this year. Seeming to be mentally recovered from the loss Ronda admitted that her initial post fight thoughts were anything but positive.
“Honestly, my thought, I was like, in the medical room and I was like down in the corner, I was in the corner and I was like ‘what am I any more if i’m not this?’. I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself and that exact second i’m like ‘I’m nothing, what do I do anymore and no one gives a sh*t about me anymore without this.”
Lucky for the former champion, her support system was there to pick her up when she was at her lowest. Rousey’s boyfriend, fellow UFC fighter, Travis Browne helped keep the negative thoughts out of her head.
“And to be honest I looked up and I saw my man Travis was standing up there and I looked up at him and I was like, I need to have his babies. I need to stay alive. Really that was it. I haven’t told anybody that. I only told him.”
Three months on from the brutal loss in Australia, pictures emerged of Rousey in the gym training late last week. The “Rowdy” one is set to face the winner of the March 5 bout between current champion Holly Holm and No. 1 contender Miesha Tate, who has fought Rousey twice, in the co-main event at UFC 196.