My Fight / Your Fight (17 page)

The match came down to golden score (sudden death), when I pulled out the win. I walked off the mat, and Justin reached out to give me a hug.

“I had no idea you were so amazing,” he said as he pulled me toward him.

He wrinkled his nose, adding, “And you smell like vomit.”

“Yeah, I threw up,” I said, sheepishly.

I won my next match and the tournament, but I couldn't enjoy the win because I was already dreading making weight at the Belgian Open the following week.

Over the next several days, I ran the equivalent of several marathons while wearing plastic sweats, which increase sweating. I starved and dehydrated myself. I sat in the sauna watching flames jump off the heated rocks. I ran out of the sauna to escape the fire, only to learn it was a heatstroke-induced hallucination.

I made weight in Belgium, but didn't even place in the tournament. My body was breaking down, but I refused to cave.

The Super World Cup in Paris was the following week. It was the circuit's biggest tournament. When I arrived in Paris a few days before, I hadn't eaten an actual meal in a week. I hadn't had more than a few sips of water in days. I stepped on the scale to see what I weighed. I was 66.6 kilograms. I stared at the number, devastated.

I went upstairs to turn on the hot water in my bathtub to try to sweat it out, and the whole hotel had run out of hot water because all the tournament athletes were there cutting weight.

I found a gym with a sauna and sat on the top level, as close to the heater as possible, my head against the wood-paneled wall. I could smell my hair burning, but I wasn't sweating.

I gave up. I called Jimmy Pedro back at home.

“I can't do it,” I said over and over. “I can't make the weight.”

“No, you're going to make weight,” he said. “You need to do this. Get back in there. You need to do it again.”

It was the only time in my entire career that I said I couldn't make weight. I had never even admitted to the struggles I was going through in the process. I finally brought myself to have the courage to say something and got shot down.

Fuck it
, I thought.
There's no way I can drop over three and a half kilos.

I ate all the snacks—fruit, trail mix, granola bars—that I had been saving for after the weigh-in. Then I went and met up with Bob, who had flown out to Europe to watch me compete. He was staying in a Parisian apartment, and had bought some groceries, and I made myself a cheese sandwich, skipping weigh-ins and the tournament. But I was already looking ahead and couldn't even enjoy the meal. I was ashamed and embarrassed for failing, but I believed if I won the next tournament in Austria all would be forgiven.

I arrived in Linz in the afternoon. Linz had been host to the annual Austrian World Cup tournament for decades; my mom had competed here. I checked into the hotel. I had less than twenty-four hours to lose nearly ten pounds and be ready to compete.

In judo, you make all your own arrangements and travel alone with no coach, putting up the money yourself, as you circle the globe representing the United States. Sometimes, USA Judo would reimburse you months later, sometimes they wouldn't. I booked my room at the hotel that had been the tournament hotel in years past.

I arrived in Linz and got to my hotel early. I pushed through the glass doors and surveyed the lobby for other team sweats, duffle bags featuring national flags, other athletes. The reception area was largely empty.

Great, maybe I can get an early check-in
, I thought.

The desk clerk motioned me to the counter. “Hallo, welcome to Linz,” she said in a thick Austrian accent, pronouncing her
w
's as
v
's.

“Thank you,” I said. “I have a reservation for Rousey.”

She typed something into the computer.

“Yes, we have you staying with us for six days,” she said.

“Yeah, I'm here for the tournament,” I said.

“That's nice,” she said in a tone that made it clear she had no idea what I was talking about.

Well, not everyone is a sports fan
, I thought to myself.

She handed me my room key.

“Is there a shuttle?” I asked.

“A shuttle?” Now she looked confused.

“Yeah, usually, there's like a shuttle to take you to the tournament.”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” she said.

“Um, OK, well, maybe there's someone else you could ask.” Clearly there was some kind of language barrier. I had not eaten anything in nearly forty-eight hours and my patience was wearing thin.

“Of course,” she said with a smile. She turned to the other reception clerk. Their brief conversation in German ended when her coworker gave the internationally recognizable “I have no clue what you are talking about” shrug.

“I'm sorry,” the receptionist said to me. “I do not know about this tournament.”

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something was not right.

She handed me my room key.

“We hope you enjoy your stay with us,” she said cheerfully while eyeing me like I was mentally unstable.

Up in my room, I dropped my duffle on the floor, pulled out my laptop, and Googled: Austria World Cup. Nothing but soccer sites.

I typed in: Austria World Cup judo. I clicked on one of the pages, reading as it loaded. The tournament was being held in Vienna.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I started bawling and called my mom.

Her voice was groggy. I had woken her up but even then her mind was a steel trap—she had just happened to read that there was no one competing for the United States in the division up from mine that weekend.

“Here is what you are going to do,” she said. “You are going to call up Valerie Gotay. [Valerie was at the tournament and competing in the women's lightweight division.] You are going to tell Valerie to go to the coach's meeting tonight and move you up to seventy kilos. Linz is not that far from Vienna. You are going to go to the airport in the morning and get a ticket. You will go to the tournament, and everything will be fine.”

“But they'll all be bigger than me,” I said, still crying.

“Well, no, apparently, they'll all be seventy kilos, which is what you are now,” my mom said.

I didn't know what to say.

“You might feel like this is a terrible thing, but this isn't the worst thing that could happen,” my mom continued. “You've been in the top ten at sixty-three kilos for years, so all these girls are training for you. Nobody at seventy kilos is expecting you. Just go out and fight. There are no expectations.”

Her logic was calming.

“And get something to eat because you've been trying to kill yourself making weight,” she added.

I got off the phone and ate the entire minibar. It was delicious.

Suddenly all the pressure disappeared. I had spent so much time feeling guilty, like I had let everyone down, like I had failed. Now, I realized that I had always had the option of making a change. It was just up to me to make that decision.

The next morning, I ate breakfast, flew to Vienna, and headed to the venue. I made weight and won the tournament. It was one of the best tournaments I ever fought.

I stepped on the mat and was only seconds into my first match when I realized,
These girls are not any stronger than I am.
They were fifteen pounds heavier than the girls I had been fighting, but not any stronger. It was only then that I understood how much I had weakened myself at that lower weight.

What was more, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I was enjoying myself. I realized that the making weight part of competition had become the whole tournament for me. Once that wasn't an issue anymore, my focus was just on competing and having fun. I actually had a lot of fun the day I won the Austria World Cup. I had no expectations for myself, or for anybody else. I didn't feel like I had to live up to anything. I just had to do as well as I could do.

I used to say all the time, “Changing things is not that easy.”

But it is just as easy as making up your mind. You can always make a decision. And if that decision doesn't work, you can make another decision.

As kids we're taught to dream big and to think everything is possible: Win the Olympics. Be president. And then you grow up.

People talk about how I'm so arrogant. They don't realize how much work went into getting where I am. I worked so hard to be able to think highly of myself. When people say, “Oh, you're so cocky. You're so arrogant,” I feel like they're telling me that I think too highly of myself. My question for them is: “Who are you to tell me that I need to think less of myself?”

People want to project their own insecurities on others, but I refuse to allow them to put that on me. Just because you don't think that you could be the best in the world doesn't mean that I shouldn't have the confidence to believe I can do anything.

When I got back from Vienna, I was happy. I wasn't starving myself anymore. I was winning tournaments. I had a wonderful boyfriend. I lived in a house with a bunch of people I liked. And while practices were grueling, sometimes they were even fun.

I looked forward to Thursday practice all week, then when Thursday actually came, I counted the hours down until training. Since retiring from competition, Little Jimmy was around the club less, and on Thursdays, Big Jim worked at the fire station, so Rick Hawn ran the senior practice. One Thursday, Rick suggested we do a round of no gi grappling (matwork without a gi jacket to grip on to) at the end. It was the most fun any of us ever had at practice. From that practice on, we only did no gi grappling on Thursdays. We would get to the gym, Rick would turn on music, and the dozen or so of us at practice that night would just grapple. Big Jim knew we were doing no gi on Thursdays, but a lot of the stuff we were doing translated over to competition, so as long as we were working out, he didn't care.

Afterward, we would go to Chili's. Having just turned twenty-one, I always ordered a strawberry margarita and sipped it slowly, enjoying the sweet cool drink and the camaraderie.

We had just gotten back from Europe when a guy from Pedros' invited us over to watch a fight at his house. There had been a big MMA event on Showtime that he had recorded while we were gone. We occasionally all got together to watch fights at people's houses and just unwind. There was beer and pizza, and I helped myself to a slice. We piled into the living room as the fight was cued up. It had taken place on February 10, the same day I missed weight in Paris. I was not that into MMA, but my judo teammates loved it. It was all guys except for me and my housemate Asma Sharif. We were laughing and relaxed.

The undercard fights were on. They were fun to watch, but unmemorable. Then Gina Carano and Julie Kedzie entered the cage. I was stunned; I didn't even know women fought in MMA.

When the fight came on, the entire room went quiet. I leaned in toward the TV. It was an all-out brawl. The house was going wild. I watched their every move. I kept seeing all the mistakes the girls were making, all their lost opportunities, and I knew, even then, even though I had never done MMA, that I could beat both of them.

But what stuck with me even more than the girls' performance that night was the way the guys in my house reacted to it. They were in awe. The girls were beautiful, yes, but the guys didn't talk about them like they did the ring girls—the girls in bikinis holding up cards that say the round number—who they talked about as if they were strippers. When the guys were talking about the female fighters, they talked about their physical appearance with a level of admiration. The look I saw on their faces was respect. I had never gotten that kind of reaction from these guys, guys whom I trained with and sweated with every single day.

Gina Carano won the fight in three rounds by unanimous decision and by the end of the fight, every guy in the room was talking about what badasses these girls were. And they were awesome, but I was also convinced that I could beat the crap out of both of them.

I didn't dare say that out loud. I knew everyone would laugh at me. So I kept it inside.

I was training for the Beijing Olympics. I still wasn't over my loss in Athens, this time I was going to take home the gold. Training was the focus of my every waking moment. So, when thoughts of MMA popped into my head, I just pushed them out.

Then, one morning in the spring of 2007, I was walking to Home Depot in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Usually I'd grab a ride with Rick, but when our shifts didn't overlap, I made the mile-and-a-half walk listening to pop music. Trees were starting to sprout leaves, but the New England winter hadn't fully given way. Even though the sun was out, the air was brisk. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. I carried the store's signature bright orange apron in my hand, unwilling to put it on until I absolutely had to. Walking under the I-95 overpass, I bobbed my head to “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.” I envisioned the dancing banana from the YouTube video, and without realizing it I started choreographing my MMA victory dance as “It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Peanut Butter Jelly Time”
 
thumped through my headphones. My celebratory shuffle wasn't all that different from the banana's pixelated shimmy. “Where ya at? Where ya at?”