My Fight / Your Fight (30 page)

Winning is a habit means trying—and expecting—to be better than everybody in the world every day.

Everything leading up to the Tate fight was amplified. Camp was more difficult. The weight cut was harder. The attention was greater. The tension was higher. But every day I woke up with one purpose: Take the belt away from Miesha Tate.

I could have beaten her the day I called her out, but merely winning wasn't enough. I wanted to annihilate her, to embarrass her, to force her to admit that I was the greatest female fighter on the planet, to apologize for thinking she could be mentioned in the same sentence as me.

It was the first full camp we ever did, setting aside six weeks ahead of the March 3, 2012, bout in Columbus, Ohio. It marked the first time Edmond brought in outside sparring partners in addition to using the guys at GFC.

Darin got me a temporary apartment by the club so I wouldn't have to commute back and forth across L.A. I was so traumatized from losing water to cut weight in judo that I wanted to make 135 just by dieting down. I limited myself to one meal a day, which I didn't eat until night; it was a promise to myself, a prize for getting through the day.

Because I hadn't done a dramatic weight cut in more than two years, the weight dropped off right away. I was almost at weigh-in weight the first week of camp, but I was weakened. I was going more rounds of sparring than I had ever gone with no food in my body.

I was working social media as if it were a full-time job.

Coming out of camp, I was totally worn out, but I knew I didn't have to be fresh in order to be the best in the world. The Tuesday of fight week, Edmond, Darin, and I boarded a plane for Ohio. I took my scratchy airplane pillow, rested my head against Edmond's shoulder, and slept the entire flight.

We landed and made our way to the hotel. I woke up the next morning with a sore throat and a fever. Edmond took my temperature, and it was 101.2. For the next two days, I stayed in bed.

Friday, we went to the arena for the weigh-ins. I made weight. Then they had Miesha and I face off, our faces just inches apart. She leaned forward, touching her forehead to mine. I pushed her back using my head. The fight officials jumped between us.

Miesha looked shaken. She had a huge red mark on her forehead.

Get used to me owning you, bitch
, I thought.

My mom met up with me after the weigh-ins for dinner.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, looking concerned.

“Better,” I said, but she looked unconvinced.

I ate salted fish and vegetables for dinner, then we went back up to my room and lay on the bed.

“Can you tell me why I'm going to beat this girl?” I asked.

I felt like I was a little kid again on my way to a tournament.

“You want it more.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You've been training for this your entire life. You're an elite-level athlete. She's what, a high school wrestler? You have fought thousands of matches in the most high-pressure scenarios imaginable.”

“More, more,” I said.

“You know you can win if you're sick or injured. You're smarter than her.”

“No shit,” I said.

My mom made a cup of coffee and I posted a few more social media updates before turning my phone off until after the fight.

“That fucking bitch.”

“What?” my mom asked.

I saw on social media that Miesha Tate had filed a complaint asking the athletic commission to fine me over the “head butt.”

“One more reason to beat her,” my mom said.

“Seriously, I'll just use the win money after I beat her ass to pay it off. I'll call it a ‘fuck you' tax.”

There was a knock at the door. Marina had come out to the fight from New York and had brought me spaghetti and meatballs. I slept like a rock the night before the fight.

The next night, the referee stopped by the locker room to debrief me on the rules and walk me through what to expect him to do in the cage.

“I'm going to ask you guys to fight, you fight,” he said, reciting his spiel. “You can touch gloves if you want . . .”

“Yeah, I don't want to,” I interjected.

“Okay, then,” he said, a little caught off guard.

I looked down at the blue tape on my gloves. I was fighting out of the blue corner, meaning that when we started I would be on the right side of the cage. The blue corner is the challenger's corner. The red corner is reserved for the champion, the favorite.

I knew it was going to be the last time I ever wore blue gloves.

When we met in the cage, Miesha knew what was coming. She knew I was going to break her fucking arm. She knew it and there was nothing she could do to stop me.

Miesha's greatest asset as a fighter is that she can take a fantastic beating.

I expected Miesha to be smart and try to keep the fight at a distance. Emotion got the better of her. She ran out of her corner, head down, eyes closed, and swinging wildly. She fell into my clinch. I easily redirected her momentum and threw her to the ground. After a short scramble and an elbow to her face, I stood in her guard and spun backward around her legs to pass into a crucifix position, lying on top of her and pinning her arms down so I could elbow her face more.

Panicking, she gave me her arm when I wasn't even looking for it. I threw one leg over her head to go for the armbar. I could feel her elbow giving, but I could also feel her slipping out. I decided to start hammer-fisting her face instead. I rolled out of the position and stood up. She desperately held on to my back and we collapsed to the ground.

She was trying to hook her legs around me from behind. I grabbed her feet to unhook them, but realized my shorts were too short, and if I pulled too hard, I would flash my bojango to the world. I stood, picked her up, and slammed her on her head. I got on my knees to untangle her feet and slipped out and stood up. She tried to follow me up, but I punched her straight in the face and laid her ass back down. She stood up, trying to grab and push me against the cage. I reversed her and held her on the cage, kneeing her thighs to set up a beautiful
osoto
(backward throw), then cartwheeling over my head to improve my ground position. She grabbed the cage (a violation of the rules) to help herself up. The referee warned her of the infraction as we stood, and I hit her with a jab and a cross. She missed a kick from a mile away, throwing sloppy punches that I easily blocked. I hit her with a hard straight right and an even harder hip toss. I moved in to mount her. She turned and gave her back.

I knew the first round was winding down and figured a submission finish would be faster than a TKO. I purposely held my weight to the right side and hit her on the left side of the head to bait her to try to stand up. Pushing with her left hand, she moved to get up. It was exactly what I was looking for! I hooked her arm and spun into my favorite armbar.

Many people think that when you do an armbar, the arm breaks. But it doesn't break. When you do an armbar, the aim is to put so much pressure on the person's arm that you pop the joint out of the socket. You can feel it when it pops. It's like ripping the leg off a Thanksgiving turkey. You hear it
pop-pop-pop
, then squish.

Pulling her arm straight, I arched back until I felt the squish, her ligaments snapping between my legs.

She was still trying to escape.

As soon as I felt the joint pop, my focus shifted to protecting myself and preventing her from escaping. I grabbed her hand and pushed it over the side of my hip, forcing her elbow to go more than ninety degrees in the wrong direction. I ripped off muscles from her bone and tendons.

With a vise grip on her injured arm, I sat up to punch her in the face with my other hand. With her elbow fully dislocated, there was nothing holding her in that position anymore except the pain and her fear of me.

She tapped.

Then, as far as I was concerned, she disappeared.

I felt relief, then I was overwhelmed by an indescribable joy.

I stood in the middle of the cage as the announcer called out, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a time of four minutes and twenty-seven seconds in round number one. She is the winner by way of submission. She is still undefeated. She is the new, Strikeforce women's world bantamweight champion. Rowdy Ronda Rousey!”

The crowd roared.

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker came up behind me and wrapped the championship belt around my waist, and I jumped. I had forgotten about that part.

I looked down at the black leather belt with its huge gold front, dozens of gems shimmering under the spotlights. It was much heavier than I expected it to be.

A calming peace swept over me. I had achieved what I had set out to do.

A microphone was thrust in front of me. I realized I was going to have to find words to say.

I thanked my coaches, my teammates, and my family. I was sincerely grateful for everything they had done to get me to this moment. I thought of my dad. I looked up into the stands almost expecting to see his flag waving there again. He had always known I was going to be the best in the world. I wanted him to hear that his sleeper had woken up.

“To my dad, wherever you are,” I said. “I hope you see this. We all miss you, we love you, and this is for you. I hope you're proud of me.”

I was rushed out of the cage to go straight for drug testing. A crush of officials accompanied by the television production crew tried to usher me backstage. I stopped, scanning the crowd for my mom.

“Come on,” one of the officials urged.

“I have to look for her.”

I spotted my mom, beaming and screaming in the crowd.

“There's my mom!” I shouted, and pointed.

“Come on,” the official told me again.

“Let her go see her mom,” Edmond told the guard. The entire line of us—me, my corner, security, the officials, the cameramen, and the event staffers—cut across the floor to where my mom was standing.

She wrapped her arms around me. I leaned in.

“I'm still proud of you,” she said.

It was the first time I ever remembered her saying that to me about any competition. I felt like I had won all over again.

I have been asked if I have no fear. The truth is I fear a lot of things. I just don't let fear control me. I use it to motivate me. I confront things that scare me head-on, because fear is nothing more than a feeling. The girls I'm facing in the cage, they can hurt me. Fear can't actually hurt me. Acting without fear is called recklessness. Acting with fear is called courage.

I had been broken up with Dog Park Cute Guy for a few months and had gotten back into the dating game as I was rising up through Strikeforce. I met my new boyfriend at the club where I had been teaching judo. He was nice. He had a job. He had his own place. He didn't do heroin. Given my dating history, I was OK with kind of boring. Of course, people always later say serial killers were kind of boring neighbors.

I was at his house two weeks before the Tate fight and asked if I could continue my social media hustle on his computer while he was out. He said sure. While trying to download a picture off Facebook so I could post it on Twitter, the “Save As” screen showed thumbnails of recent downloads. There among the images were naked photos of me. Naked photos of me taken
without
my knowledge. They were photos of me doing really mundane things like playing DragonVale on my phone or brushing my teeth. (Yes, I brush my teeth naked.)

Rage swept along my spine like ice as I scrolled through the pictures he'd taken over the last few months. What if he'd shared them? What if he had more hidden somewhere? What about the pictures on the phone?

I deleted the photos. Then I erased the hard drive. Then I waited for Snappers McCreepy to come home from work. I stood frozen like a statue in his kitchen, getting angrier and angrier. I started cracking my knuckles and clenched my teeth. The longer I waited, the madder I got. Forty-five minutes later, he walked in the door.

He saw my face and froze. He asked what was wrong and when I didn't say anything, he started to cry.

I slapped him across the face so hard my hand hurt.

“I found all those naked pictures, you sick motherfucker!” I screamed.

“Let me explain,” he pleaded.

But there was nothing to say. I moved to leave, but he was blocking the door.

“Let me out of here! I never want to fucking see you again. You will never fucking touch me again.”

“You're not leaving,” he told me.

“Fuck, yes, I am,” I said.

He wouldn't move. I punched him in the face with a straight right, then a left hook. He staggered back and fell against the door.

Fuck, my hands
, I thought.
I can't hurt them before a fight.

I slapped him with my right hand. He still wouldn't move. Then I grabbed him by the neck of his hoodie, kneed him in the face, and tossed him aside on the kitchen floor.

As I ran out the door to my car, he ran after me.

“No, wait! Let me explain!” he cried.

“Fuck you, pervert!”

I got in my car. He jumped in the passenger's seat and grabbed the steering wheel. “You're not going anywhere until you hear me out.” I walked around the car, pulled him by the neck of the hoodie again, dragged him out onto the sidewalk, and left him writhing there as I sped away.

After the Tate fight, I turned my attention to all the things I had put off dealing with. The situation with Snappers McCreepy was near the top of my list. I had deleted the photos I found, but I knew there could be more. The win had catapulted me into the spotlight. My stomach turned as I imagined him trying to sell the pictures. I worried that he'd post them on the Internet. I worried that someone else would take pictures down the road.

ESPN asked me to be part of their annual Body Issue, where they convince athletes to pose buck-naked. I figured if there was any possibility of naked pictures of me getting out, I wanted it to be on my terms, and being part of a spread of the world's best athletes seemed a tasteful way to do it.