Not that she was high on the list of anticipated UFC comebacks, still, Ronda Rousey has just revealed that due to a carousel of concussions she’s sustained during her fighting career, she is no longer neurologically fit to professionally compete in fighting sports ever again.
After losing two back to back knockouts after her surging, undefeated streak which propelled her to global superstar status, Rousey has moved to the WWE, and been relatively quiet with her media appearances, especially when asked about her UFC career. The internet was rife with accusations of ‘Rowdy’ being a poor loser and poor sport – to which I would have to agree – but still, one can’t help feel for her.
In a recent interview where she was asked if she’d ever return to the UFC cage, Rousey said: “Every couple years, the same rumour comes out. It’s nice to feel missed, I guess. But it’s not happening. I’m not neurologically fit to compete anymore at the highest level. I just can’t. You just get to a level where the neurological injuries you take accumulate over time. They don’t get better.”
“It just got to a point where it wasn’t safe for me to fight anymore. I just couldn’t continue to fight at that higher level.”
Ronda Rousey
Concussions are one of the most dire consequences of being a professional fighter (American football is actually worse in that respect, however), and Rousey herself claims that before her professional career ever took off, she’d already plowed through dozens of concussions, none of which she paid the proper respect and adequate recovery.
“When I got into MMA, I had already had dozens of concussions that I trained through,” Rousey mentioned. “Like, not even stopped for. So that was about a decade of having concussion symptoms more often than not.”
Rousey added: “So when I got into MMA, I was playing a game of zero errors. Then it got to the point where I was fighting more than anybody. I had more outside of fighting responsibilities than anybody, and it just got to be lighter and lighter hits were hurting me more and more and more. I got to a point where I couldn’t take a jab without getting dazed, without getting concussion symptoms.”
She concluded, “It just got to a point where it wasn’t safe for me to fight anymore. I just couldn’t continue to fight at that higher level.”
Someone who comes to mind is the hulking heavyweight, Alistair Overeem. At 44 years of age, his MMA record stands at 47 wins, 19 losses, 1 no contest. 15 of those losses comes by knock out, and most of those being toward the end of his career. That’s some serious brain trauma he’s sustained from the biggest, most dangerous men on the planet – the most vicious coming from Francis Ngannou, who has the hardest recorded punch in history – and one can only hope that the effects don’t catch up with him as he gets older.
As Julius Caesar said before every gladiator match in ancient Rome, “For those about to die, we salute you.” Barbaric thinking, in today’s view, but still, one must sympathise with the injuries sustained for the benefit of our entertainment.
