SportsAsToldByAGirl Spotlight: Ronda Rousey

Photo Credit: AP

With the recent announcement of Ronda Rousey’s fight with Holly Holm, she seemed like the perfect person to spotlight this week. Rousey has also become a permanent part of the zeitgeist and challenges her male competitors in a way that has never been done before.

In her career so far, Rousey has won all 12 of her MMA matches, 3 knockouts and 9 submissions which are moves that are done during a fight where there is a clear winner. In addition to her fighting skills, Rousey has made appearances in Expendables 3, Fast and the Furious 7, and most recently the Entourage movie. However, acting always takes a backseat to her fighting and it’s obvious why. Rousey is a beast and standing at 5’7” and 135 pounds, there is little doubt that she could beat her male counterparts and the fact that she became the first woman to ever sign with UFC. In addition to that, her latest televised fight against Bethe Correia in August was a knockout in the first round in 34 seconds. Rousey literally has the chops to hang with the big boys.

However, fighting is not the only thing that Rousey excels at. MMA President, Dana White’s attention was first caught by Rousey’s fighting, but also “She’s beautiful, intelligent and very pro-women, which I respect,” which is some of the most uncommon wording to describe a fighter. While Rousey is beautiful, that is certainly not what she wants to be remembered for or what she really prides herself on, but instead it’s the last two things that White described that really make her worthy of all of her accomplishments.

Intelligence is key in boxing and Rousey is dangerously intelligent. Her autobiography My Fight/Your Fight attests to that, but her book gives her audience a look into her personal life, one that not the everyday person would see. One quote in particular really resonates, “I dissociate from pain, because I am not the pain that I am feeling.” which is an extremely intelligent statement coming from a fighter. She keeps her emotions out of her fight and separates the pain from what she’s feeling on the inside which adds to the physicality of her fighting. Rousey is a physical fighter in the ring, giving her body over to fight and using it to be able to find her opponent’s weaknesses.

Being pro-women could seem like an interesting term to describe someone who is a woman and fights women, but Rousey is truly pro-women. Rousey brings new life and new meaning into the word “feminist.” Rousey is not afraid to discuss her body, especially when it is criticized for being too “manly” which Rousey retorted back with “I think it’s feminist-ly bad-ass as f**k, because there’s not a single muscle on my body that isn’t used for a purpose.” Her body is used not as a sexual object but as a temple and her feminist attitude doesn’t end at her body.

Her infamous feud with Floyd Mayweather has kept eyes on her as well because she’s not afraid of her male counterparts. When asked about Mayweather, she responded with “Well, I will never say that I can’t beat anyone. I don’t think that me and him would ever fight, unless we ended up dating.” As both undefeated champions in their careers so far, a fight between them would be groundbreaking but it looks like she has no time for Mayweather and why would she? She’s the one of the greatest female athletes of all time, gracefully but swiftly taking down Mayweather with her words.

Ronda Rousey represents a whole new type of female athlete who is breaking the barrier in both the sport she plays and in the world that we live in now. She goes up against males who would make others cower in fear and she is beautiful at the same time, a paradox that is supposedly unheard of in female sports. It’s only a matter of time before Rousey takes over the world.