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Ronda Rousey has accomplished a lot during her athletic career in judo, the UFC, pro wrestling and much more.
Those achievements did come with a downside though, as the fighter turned pro wrestler has been dealing with neurological issues for quite a while now.
“I don’t have any regrets or anything like that,” Rousey told UNTAPPED (transcript via Alexander K. Lee of MMA Fighting). “Fortunately, I have a lot more information now about what was going on with me. I just felt like I couldn’t be honest about what I was physically going through without people feeling like I was making excuses for myself. I also feel like I didn’t owe anyone any explanation especially if they were going to shit all over it. So yeah, I needed to figure out what was going on first.
“Dana 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. 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.”
In her combat sports career, Rousey achieved such things as an Olympic medal, UFC Women’s Bantamweight Title and multiple WWE championships.
Rousey also credits UFC CEO Dana White for helping her through these neurological issues.
“He 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.
“[The doctor] 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.”
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