Ronda Rousey wore a Roots of Fight T-shirt with a photo of Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley on the front with the sleeves torn off, a pair of shorts and boots.
She grinned, seeming almost embarrassed, after finishing her makeup and coming to the mats at the Glendale Fighting Club to greet a phalanx of reporters, microphones and cameras.
Those covering the event made a horseshoe around her and cameras whirred as she took her seat.
“We’ve probably dealt with similar situations,” Rousey said of Ali and the media crush he would regularly attract during his heyday when his was the most recognizable face on Earth.
Rousey’s not there – yet – though if her popularity keeps growing exponentially the way it has over the last year, she could come close.
In the last three months, she’s announced her next fight on Good Morning America; had the promo for that bout debut on The Ellen DeGeneres Show; hosted SportsCenter; did a guest spot on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon; appeared on the covers of Self and Ring magazines; and was on the Fox NFL pregame show on Sunday.
She’s far and away the biggest draw in combat sports, and no one else right now is close.
She’s worked hard on her boxing in preparation for her women’s bantamweight title defense Nov. 14 in Melbourne, Australia, against former boxing champion Holly Holm in the main event of UFC 193.
Her appearance on the Ring cover was special to her, and not just because in doing so she became the first mixed martial artist to appear on the cover of the venerable boxing magazine.
“I’ve really fallen in love with boxing,” Rousey said.
She’s worked hard on her boxing in preparation for her women’s bantamweight title defense Nov. 14 in Melbourne, Australia, against former boxing champion Holly Holm in the main event of UFC 193.
Her coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, raved about Rousey’s boxing and said he doesn’t believe Holm will stand in front of Rousey.
“She’s going to run,” Tarverdyan said, dismissively, of Holm.
Rousey has developed from a one-trick pony who used her incredible judo skills to carry her in the early stages of her MMA career. She’s developed her game so well in the last five years that she’s arguably the best fighter in the sport’s short history.
She runs through opponents so fast – the fight with Holm will be her third of 2015, though defenses against Cat Zingano at UFC 184 and Bethe Correia at UFC 190 failed to last a minute combined – that she has to set goals other than simply winning in order to stay motivated.
“To be honest, my goals are so crazy that, what I’d really like to do, and I don’t know if I have the time because I want to do so many things, but I want to be remembered as one of the greatest fighters of all time, any sport,” she said. “What I would love to do, I mean, I got an Olympic medal [in judo in 2008], I would want to retire from MMA as one of the greatest of all time.
“I would love to have a chance to be the boxing world champion. I would love to have a chance to be a jiu-jitsu world champion. I would love the chance to be the [WWE] Divas world champion and be the best of everything at one point.”
Rousey is a once-in-a-generation type of athlete and she may defy the normal conventions of age, but she’s nearly 29 and is at the age where fighters tend to start to decline physically.
Her body has been battered from nearly two decades of physical abuse, and she’s not certain of how long it will allow her to do what she does.
It’s not simply the fights but the hours of practicing that may ultimately be her downfall.
“Technically, I feel my level’s increasing all the time,” Rousey told Yahoo Sports after her media scrum Wednesday had concluded. “Physically, I’m very much at my peak right now.”
Rousey is a far better athlete than most of her competition, but she’s also extremely technical. She manages to turn negatives into positives. She said in some ways she is a better fighter because she tore up her knee as a teenager.
But that’s because of an incredibly high pain tolerance and a will to win that is such that she ignores the aches and pains that sideline others.
UFC president Dana White called her the most durable athlete he’s ever known, but she’s not Marvel Girl, even if she dreams about it.
“I’ve had arthritis since I was 19 years old and I had my first knee surgery when I was 16,” she said. “I’ve had four knee surgeries to this point. I don’t know how much longer I can go. I don’t want to give away too many of my injuries, but those are the ones I know. I have some things that are degenerative over time. I can’t do this forever. I wish I could, but it is what it is.”
Rousey is a far better athlete than most of her competition, but she’s also extremely technical. She manages to turn negatives into positives. She said in some ways she is a better fighter because she tore up her knee as a teenager.
She wasn’t content just to endure the rigors of rehabilitation. She developed other skills while she rehabbed her knee.
It’s that kind of spirit that has set her apart from her peers.
“I spent a whole year only on the ground [during rehab], which is very uncommon for judo,” she said. “My style became half ground and half standing. In judo, it’s mostly standing and no ground at all. But now that I have a great arm bar and I have all these skills, I actually think, ‘What would it be like if I actually did have another [healthy] leg?’ That would be cool.”
Her boxing was a liability at first, but Tarverdyan swears she would be one of the best boxers in the world if she chose to do that. He also said he felt she could win a jiu-jitsu world title "for fun" after her fighting career is over.
Rousey said at the top level, the differences physically between the athletes are small.
“What sets me apart is the mental part, and how I use what I have,” she said. “I come from judo where it’s very much not about strength. It’s maximum efficiency, minimum effort. I’m trying to make everything easy all the time, and I’m trying to be as efficient as possible.”
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