Former UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey was knocked out by Holly Holm in 2015 and now, nine years later, she's finally opening up about it. After the loss Rousey went into hiding and didn't give any interviews, but now with the release of her latest book, she's spilling the secrets we had all wondered about.
“The Holm fight, I didn’t really get to start my process because I literally just got hit right away, and it knocked loose all my bottom teeth and I was out on my feet from the very beginning,” Rousey said during a fan Q & A (h/t MMA Fighting). “So there wasn’t like that same kind of process of what I usually have."
She continued, “My process was usually, I would plan out the first exchange, and everything from then on out would be an improvisation, within the range of what I trained for specifically for that person.”
She never got a chance to really get her game plan going as she was finished in the second round after a brutal viral head kick knockout.
“For Holm, what we trained a lot [was] doing lateral, side-to-side movement to herd her towards the cage,” Rousey said. “When I was basically out on my feet, I couldn’t see distance. There’s no depth perception when you have a bad concussion. I was completely unable to carry that out and even think coherently. I wasn’t able to operate the way that I usually do.I’m constantly trying to keep the person reacting to what I’m doing. There’s no step back and reset and start again. I was constantly always trying to keep pressure on the person and keep them reacting to me at all times. That’s why you never saw me, ‘Let’s back up and do this again,’ or we’re going to back up again and come back. It was one long exchange. That was basically speed decision-making, this is what was happening.”
Rousey was never able to bounce back from the loss. She fought Amanda Nunes a year later but was finished in the first round. She then left the UFC and competed in the WWE.
Live on DAZN: Subriel Matias vs. Liam Paro on June 15. Click here for details.