The last time Ronda Rousey appeared on The Ellen Show she was on top of the world and supremely confident, having just captured the world’s attention by KO’ing Bethe Correia, but this time around it was a different story as she showed a much more vulnerable side while recalling her devastating loss to Holly Holm.
““Honestly, my thought, I was in the medical room and I was down in the corner, and I was like, ‘What am I anymore if I’m not this?’” Rousey said when asked what she was thinking after her defeat. “I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself, and that exact second I’m like, ‘I’m nothing. What do I do anymore?’ and ‘No one gives a (expletive) about me anymore without this.’”
That may seem overly dramatic, but at the same time, let’s not forget that Rousey’s father took his own life when she was just eight years old which left a lasting impression on her.
As it turns out, it wasn’t the thought of avenging her loss to Holm that pulled her out of that depression, but rather her relationship with fellow UFC fighter, Travis Browne.
“To be honest, I looked up and I saw my man, Travis, was standing there,” Rousey said. “And I looked up at him and I was like, ‘I need to have his babies. I need to stay alive.’ Really, that was it. I haven’t told anybody that. I’ve only told him.”
Still, Rousey admits to doing a lot of soul-searching afterwards.
“I was trying to think, ‘what is the reason for all this?'” Rousey recalls. “I’m thinking what my actual purpose is, and maybe just winning all time isn’t what’s best for everybody, and I felt like maybe my role is…everyone has their moment of picking themselves off the floor and I’d gone through several of mine, but nobody had actually seen me go through it. Maybe I just had to be that example of picking myself off the floor for everyone, and maybe that’s what I’m meant for.
“I really do believe I’m still undefeated, because being defeated is a choice. Everybody has losses in their life, but I choose to always be undefeated.”
Watch Rousey and Ellen’s full conversation below.
