Like a true friend, Ronda Rousey found me when I was down and out.
I was working 14 hours a day at a job that paid very little. It was monotonous—endless days spent mostly sitting around. The kind of job where your brain starts to melt and you aren't sure if you are still a human being with conscious thought at the end of it. The kind of job where you are so bored, you actually have time to read a full New Yorker article, like all the way to the last page. Not just skimming either, but rather reading every single word. That's how Ronda found me, and I will never leave her side.
I like sports. I grew up playing sports. But I have never been into combat sports. The idea of two people punching each other in the face over and over felt like gratuitous violence rather than fun entertainment. MMA seemed even more brutal and unnecessary than boxing. So I was surprised the first time I watched a Ronda fight after reading the article. It was her bout against Alexis Davis, the one where Ronda beat Alexis' face so hard, Alexis tried to get up and fight the ref.
But I wasn't revolted at all; I was captivated.
The whole fight, Ronda was in complete control. She was graceful and powerful, and utterly savage. The way she threw Alexis' hands off her so she could celebrate was so cold, but filled with such ecstasy. It felt like watching someone do exactly what they were put on this Earth to do.
Obsession
I would go on to watch all of Ronda's fights. The ritual was to start at her first Strikeforce fight against Sarah D'Alelio—first-round armbar submission—and then I would make my way through Ronda's entire fight history. Julia Budd, first-round armbar submission. Miesha Tate, first-round armbar submission. Sarah Kaufman, first-round armbar submission. Then on to the UFC fights: Liz Carmouche, first-round armbar submission; rematch with Tate, third-round armbar submission; Sara McMann, first-round TKO; Alexis Davis, first-round knockout in 16 seconds.
UFC fights can be boring. They can end up being two sweaty dudes hugging each other for 15 minutes and then having some faceless people decide who won. Ronda's fights were never that; they were exciting and masterful.
I would bring friends over to my house and make them watch Ronda's fights while I watched them watch. I would break down what happened. I would pause the video and go back and make them rewatch if I felt they weren't giving it their full attention. And then I would basically yell at them until they agreed she was the best. Look at her all-black outfit—that's better than everyone's! Listen to her entrance song—that's better than all the others! Look at her mean mug! Look how she enters the ring! Watch her fights! Listen to how she talks after she wins! LOOK AT HER. SHE IS BETTER THAN ALL OF THEM.
On one particularly raucous (read: drunk) night, my friend Jenny and her fiance Joe were over. I went through my normal Ronda rigmarole: watch her fights, yell in their faces until they agree with me, watch more of her fights, listen to "Bad Reputation" on full volume while my husband says we should keep it down and I keep saying, "The song's almost over."
But on this night we took it a step further; while Joe was in the bathroom, Jenny and I started doing our faceoff poses, which quickly led to our full-on "UFC'ing." The look on Joe's face when he rounded the corner to see his fiance and her friend on the ground trying to rip each other's arm out of the socket was pure horror and concern.
But what can I say? Ronda made me feel like I could do anything.
I watched Ronda's fight against Cat Zingano live on pay-per-view. First-round submission by armbar. It took 14 seconds. I turned to my husband and said, "We are going to her next fight, no matter what." I had no idea what that would mean.
Conception (or Lack Thereof)
I needed Ronda not just because my job was tough. And to be completely honest, a tough job with long hours isn't going to break me; it just gave me enough time to read a long article. What was actually breaking me was that my husband and I had been trying unsuccessfully for over a year to get pregnant.
When people talk about "trying," they say it with a glimmer in their eyes, like it's this little naughty code for "we are having a lot of sex right now." And for the first couple of months, it does feel like that's fun, and afterward you lie in bed dreaming up the child you just created. But month five of "trying," it isn't as cute. The hope starts to strain.
When you are a teenage girl, it is hammered into your head that it "only takes one time" to get pregnant. It rightfully scares the bejesus out of you. But when I was actually ready to have a baby, I found out the "one time" is actually really hard to get right.
Not being able to get pregnant made me doubt my body in a way I had never encountered before. I had spent a lot of time criticizing how my body looked, but it never occurred to me that maybe my body didn't work on the inside. I felt like I wasn't a woman. This thing that seemed so easy for other women, this thing teenagers were doing by accident, this thing that has sustained all of human life for centuries, and I couldn't do it. I felt irreparably flawed. Every month, when my uterine lining fell out of my body, so did a little piece of my heart.
I cried. I sobbed. I would sit on the floor and weep so hard I couldn't breathe. My husband stopped asking if I was OK, because it was so clear that I wasn't. It feels like a cliche to be a woman wanting to be pregnant, so I am not exactly sure how to explain it so you understand the full amount of physical pain I was in. I felt like my body was going to collapse from the weight of sadness. I would look in the mirror and not recognize the woman in front of me because I felt so betrayed by my own body.
One of the only reasons I was able to scrape myself off the ground was to watch Ronda. She made me happy when I was sad. She gave me strength. She made me feel like I could do anything.
Brazil
When it was announced UFC 190 would be in Rio de Janeiro, I was all "whaaaa..." because I thought it was going to be in Las Vegas and I had made this whole big deal to everyone about going to see Ronda's next fight.
I fell back on a self-pity/self-harm mantra I had adopted over the last couple of months. We don't have a baby, so why not? Why not have another drink? Why not smoke a cigarette? Why not spend all the money we saved for a baby a on trip to Brazil? So we did.
We spent a couple of days in Rio, going to the beach, drinking caipirinhas, taking selfies with the giant Jesus statue and pretending like we were pulling off Brazilian swimsuits. And then on August 1, we took a 45-minute cab ride to where the Olympics would be held the next year, to watch Ronda Rousey fight. I was so hyped up, we left super early and ended up watching about eight hours of UFC fights before it was time for the maaaaaaaaain event.
Let me tell you, when all the lights went out and Joan Jett started screaming about her reputation, I just about lost my fangirl mind. It was everything I dreamed of, based mostly on YouTube videos. The energy in the Whatever-Cellphone Arena was electric and intense. It was Bethe Correia's home turf, yet even the boos against Ronda felt like cheers for her.
That's been Ronda's whole career: Even the negativity has encouraged her. My boss at the long-houred job, who is now my boss again at Bleacher Report (whaddup, Neil), gave me Ronda's autobiography, My Fight, Your Fight. I devoured it in one day. In the book, Ronda doesn't describe anything in her life as easy. From her life growing up, to her judo career, to her relationships, to breaking into MMA, Ronda thrives on overcoming the odds.
In Brazil, Ronda knocked Bethe out in 34 seconds. It was not a pretty fight. It was hard to tell what was going on and who was in control, which felt different than other Ronda fights. But it was over so fast, another first-round KO for Ronda. The crowd went wild; seriously, we all went feral for a good 45 seconds. Hair grew on our backs, and our canine teeth extended over our lips. Ronda delivered what we all wanted: a fast first-round end, and we were ecstatic to have it.
Ronda pointed at Bethe after she knocked her out and said, "Don't cry." The next day I got pregnant. And I stopped crying.
So, technically, my husband got me pregnant, but I do give Ronda a lot of the credit. It happened the day after watching her beat the s--t out of Bethe Correia. And I know those two events are related. They have to be. Ronda means too much to me for it to be a coincidence.
Concession
We all know what happened next. Ronda fought Holly Holm and lost. It was 15 weeks after her fight with Bethe; I know this because I was 15 weeks pregnant and super sick.
I didn't think Holly was a legitimate opponent. She is a boxer, while Ronda's background is judo. When Ronda got her on the mat, the whole fight would be over. I do remember watching Holly's open workout and seeing her kicks and thinking that could be a problem for Ronda because Ronda hasn't kicked since Strikeforce. My morning sickness was more like "all-day sickness" combined with pregnancy exhaustion, and because of my belief that I really did not think it was a contest, like at all, I didn't stay up to watch the Holm fight.
Much like this recent presidential election, I went to bed thinking, She's got this. Only to check my phone at 3 a.m. and be chilled over to find out that, no, she did not have this. Obviously, Hillary Clinton losing the presidential election and Ronda losing her title fight are not the same thing. Hillary's loss will have a profound effect on the world for years, as we are already witnessing. Ronda's loss, meanwhile, seems more like overconfidence combined with a well-timed kick. But they both felt like disorienting punches in the gut. Things I had felt so certain about vanished in front of me.
I've never watched the whole fight with Holly. I've seen pictures and clips. But I don't know if I can ever watch the whole thing. Just like I don't need to see the map of America's states filling in red. I get it. We lost. I understand what the outcome is without watching the bloodbath.
Speaking of a bloodbath, I had a baby. I grew a collection of cells in my body that eventually turned into a larger collection of cells that then turned into a tiny human being whom I pushed out of my body. He is alive and teething and is a little maniac. I am completely fulfilled as a woman, except when I am not. Because being a mom is wonderful and terrible and just another facet of who I am. Who knew women are "flawed" and complicated?
Redemption
When Dana White said women would never fight in the UFC, it was because he was thinking of the women he already had around the UFC stage: the Octagon girls. Women he uses as decoration. Women who are meant to fall into the traditional idea of femininity—beautiful and silent.
White wasn't thinking about women like Ronda or Hillary or me. We don't fit neatly into the world's idea of what a woman should look like or sound like or act like. We are strong, we are tough, we are fighters.
I joke that maybe I got a boost of testosterone watching Ronda fight, and that's why I got pregnant. But really, I think it was that I needed to see my own brand of femininity reflected back at me. I needed to celebrate my kind of woman before I could perform one of the ultimate acts of womanhood.
Maybe all of us women have done enough. Maybe it's enough that Hillary was the first woman nominated by a major political party (who also won the popular vote by, like, a lot). Maybe it's enough that Ronda broke the glass Octagon for all female fighters. Maybe we as women should just accept what we have as enough and be content.
But I am not dropping my hard-earned baby off with my parents to go watch Ronda fight in Vegas thinking that enough is actually enough. I want to see redemption. I want to see hope. I want a win. Because I am rowdy, and I am nasty, and I am a mother------g mom, and I can do anything.
Karin is a Lead Producer for Creative Studio at Bleacher Report. She makes Gridiron Heights, a weekly animated show about the NFL along with other projects. She likes Klay Thompson, and she LOVES Ronda Rousey. She woulda played sports in college, but she was too busy doing comedy and being "cool." Karin performs weekly at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City.
