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FIRST COPY RONDA ROUSEY ESPN THE MAGAZINE COVER GO GET IT!! TALKS HOLLY HOLM REMATCH AT UFC 200

954 views · Published 12 December 2015 · 1:09 · Indexed 27 October 2026

Channel: Shady Slim · 2015 · Sports

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RONDA ROUSEY ESPN THE MAGAZINE COVER GO GET IT! Holly Holm vs Ronda Rousey Rematch at UFC 200

But Ronda Rousey opens the red door of her smallish boho town house in Venice, California, on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving because one day she does want to be Ronda Rousey again.

"I'm just really fucking sad."

Her voice is so soft you have to lean in to hear her. Sad is all she can feel since her knockout loss to Holly Holm at UFC 193 on Nov. 14. She speaks slowly, letting each word hurt. Like her hands in that ill-fated fight, her guard is down.

"I need to come back. I need to beat this chick. Who knows if I'm going to pop my teeth out or break my jaw or rip my lip open. I have to fucking do it."


A FEW BLOCKS away on the Venice Beach boardwalk, a painter touches up the neon-green wall below a mural of Rousey, painted after her 34-second win over Bethe Correia in August. It was the third straight fight she'd won in less than a minute and the one that made UFC announcer Joe Rogan say, "Once in a lifetime doesn't apply to Ronda Rousey. It's once ever-in human history."


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Brazilian street artists Bicicleta Sem Freio drew Rousey as a colorful superhero with a green-eyed, orange-tongued leopard growling at her side. Her hair is flowing wildly along her face. Her fists are up, ready to fight. Her eyes are fixed and fierce.

Rousey is not going to want to see that mural for a while. Aside from a little puffiness in her bottom lip, she still looks like Ronda Rousey. She just doesn't much feel like her.

"I've turned off my phone," she says. "I haven't looked at it. I've just been having long conversations with Mochi [her 7-year-old Argentinian Mastiff]."

She did shower today and eat a bit of onion bagel with cream cheese. She got dressed -- yes, sweats count -- and opened her door, first to her sister Maria Burns Ortiz, who brought her coffee, and then again for this interview.

"I was thinking, 'On the bright side, I'm more like crushed idealism and sardonic sense of humor now.'"

The loss to Holm is still too scary to fully feel or see. The retelling is told in fragments.

"I got hit in that first round. ... I cut my lip open and knocked a couple of my teeth loose. I was out on my feet from the very beginning."

"I wasn't thinking clearly. I had that huge cut in my mouth and I just spit [the blood] out at my feet. Then they brought the bucket over and I'm like, 'Why didn't I spit it in the bucket?' I never spit on the ground."

"It was like a dumbed-down dreamy version of yourself making decisions. ... I was just trying to shake myself out of it. I kept saying to myself, 'You're OK, keep fighting. You're OK, keep fighting.'"

"I just feel so embarrassed. How I fought after that is such an embarrassing representation of myself. I wasn't even fucking there."

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