During an interview on “Never Before Told” to promote her book “Our Fight”, Ronda Rousey revealed that she kept her severe concussion history a secret during her UFC & WWE runs, which also played a big factor in her two devastating UFC losses and eventual retirement.
Here’s what the UFC Hall of Famer said:
“My concussion history that I had to keep secret for years, so I would be able to continue to compete and perform. That’s basically why I had to retire.
I think that there was just so much to [that loss], that I couldn’t talk about it in the form of like an interview or an article or anything like that, or there would be several filters between my words and people reading it.
So much had to do with having so many concussions when I was in Judo before I even got into MMA, I couldn’t talk about it at all when I was doing MMA. Because it would literally put a target on my head, and I might not have been allowed to compete any farther.
Same thing with WWE. They have a complicated history with their performers getting concussions, and it would be a bad look on them.
So I felt like I really couldn’t talk about it at all. So I feel like this [is the] long form that I would be able to adequately address it.”
Rousey also noted that her long-term health played a bigger factor in her MMA retirement than her back-to-back knockout losses to Holly Holm in 2015 and Amanda Nunes in 2016:
“I’d like people to understand my reasons and motivations behind things. I was forced to leave fighting when I was faster, stronger, more skilled and had a better understanding of the art than ever before.
A really hard decision to understand, but one that my body really made for me.
I feel like this is the only way to really get that across in the best, most complete way that it’s not just a tweet and a headline short.”
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