Former UFC women’s bantamweight superstar Ronda Rousey hasn’t fought in the Octagon since a TKO loss to Amanda Nunes in December of 2016, and now she’s revealed the neurological issues she was experiencing at the time that led her to hang up her gloves for good.
Rousey explained on the ‘Untapped’ show that there is a history of epilepsy in her family, and that over time she’s learned that had been amplified by the concussions she’d suffered over the years, including multiple ones during her decorated judo career before she even transitioned to competing in MMA.
“Dana [White] sent me to this long-term fighters’ neurological study and they actually made some—I wouldn’t call them breakthroughs, but actually were able to diagnose a lot of the stuff that was going on with me and I guess still is,” Rousey revealed on the Untapped show. “I just didn’t have all the information at that time. So, I couldn’t hand that information to me then to explain things better now, so no, I don’t dwell on that at all. It was the best I could do with what I had.”
Rousey then went into detail about the symptoms she’d experienced and what she learned from a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic about the reasons why it was happening.
“[The doctor] was saying that people that get migraines are actually more susceptible to concussions and the more concussions that you get, the easier it is for these impacts to set off a migraine,” Rousey said. “And he was saying that not all migraines involve a searing headache, the headache part isn’t part of all of it and so what we think was going on was we kind of ended up in this feedback loop of the more concussions I was getting the easier it was to set off these migraines and so in these fights—go figure, two of my triggers is bright lights and head impacts—so I’d get hit and I’d basically lose big chunks of my vision and my depth perception and my ability to track movements quickly and make snap decisions, which is basically all the things that I need and I thought I have a concussion, I’m out on my feet, but I wouldn’t be stumbling around. I didn’t lose my balance. This was like, I had to retire because this kept happening to me more and more often to the point where I would get a jab and I would basically go blind.
“He said what he thinks is happening is these impacts, now because of all the concussions, are setting off these migraine events, which is like my neurons get overly excited and then they shut down. So it could be a game changer because there could actually be some solutions to it. Before I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just inevitably declined and I inevitably declined until I was shitting my pants. Great. This is my life now.’ I was like, I need to stop this or else I’m just speeding this up.”
Rousey continues to consult with doctors now in the hopes of improving the issues she’s faced.
“Now that I’m kind of getting some help in diagnosis and stuff like that, I’m much more hopeful than I’ve ever been and instead of just being like, ‘OK, this is just part of it, I’ve just got to walk away before it gets worse,’ possibly there’s something I can do to make it better,” Rousey said.
