Rogan: We don’t know if Ronda is going to be OK

The ever tremendous Stephie Haynes recently a did an extended interview with UFC color commentator Joe Rogan, some of which revolved around former UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey. The interview is long form, so do yourself a favor and skip this brief excerpt, and click the link at bottom.

What the loss means for Ronda’s career & advice for moving forward

It’s a big, fat ‘Who the knows’ [laughs]. I think first and foremost, you should always be yourself, but the reaction that you get to being yourself should tell you something about how other people view you, and show you some holes in your game as a human that you might be missing out on. If the public has a very intense reaction to you, some of it might be warranted, some of it might be unwarranted. Some might be people just being a——s and some might be that people are genuinely put off by some of the things you did.

I think it takes a while to learn how to navigate the public life, especially as a competitor. If you’re a singer and someone doesn’t like your song, whatever. If you’re a comedian and someone doesn’t think you’re funny, whatever. It’s not that devastating. But, if you get your f—ing ass kicked like she did, you get head kick KO’d, which is probably the most brutal way to go out, like BOOM! Flatlined. That’s just embarrassing, it’s devastating, and it crushes your morale and self-esteem.

People know that, so when they see this brash person who was invulnerable before, invincible…now they see holes in you. They just want to attack. ‘F— you, you’re just a person. F— you.’ It’s gonna be humbling and difficult. You’re gonna have to rebuild, you know?

As to how this affects her professionally, first of all, the big question, the Number One question, is how does this affect her physically? Like, how is she, physically? We used to think, and this is conventional wisdom, that if you got knocked out, you take some time off and you’ll be back.

There’s doctors – not dummies like me, not fight commentators – that understand the human body, who are neurologists or neuroscientists, people studying traumatic brain injuries… that’s what we witnessed. When Holly Holm head kicked Ronda and knocked her out, we witnessed a traumatic brain injury, make no mistake about it.

I had this conversation with Dana (White), and he was like, ‘Oh, Ronda’s fine,’ and I’m like, ‘Listen man, you can’t say that.’ She’s not fine. You don’t get head kick knocked out and be fine. That’s not fine. There’s damage for sure. The question is, how much damage? We just don’t know.

Andrei Arlovski is still kicking and doing great and he’s been knocked out a lot of times. Alistair Overeem, too. You talk to Alistair, and he seems to have full control of his faculties. He’s very articulate and doesn’t seem to have any problems, despite having been knocked out a bunch of times. Peter Aerts has been knocked out something like 13 times. A neurologist would likely say that you’ve gotta stop this, but he seems fine. Everybody is different. Certain people can just take more punishment, and certain people get hit once, really hard, and they’re f—ed up forever.

Look at T.J. Grant. T.J. got a concussion in training, I don’t even think he was sparring, I think he was grappling, and he got a concussion. That does happen, it’s happened to friends of mine. It’s happened to me; you roll into somebody or land really hard on somebody’s knee. He didn’t even get head kicked, he just collided with someone, and he’s never fought since. He was set to fight for the title. He worked so hard for that one opportunity, to be able to step in and fight for the UFC world title. He had earned his chance, trained like a mad man and had excellent performances leading up to it. He showed great technique and versatility, and now T.J. Grant works in a mine.

He’s not the only one. Chris Holdsworth hasn’t fought in forever because of a concussion. Joseph Valtellini from Glory had to relinquish his title because of concussions. We don’t know if she’s gonna be okay physically. You’ve gotta be f—ing honest about that. It’s a very important part of our sport. It’s the part of the sport that makes it special, because the consequences are f—ing dire.

So, when someone like Ronda gets knocked out brutally, to just brush that off, ‘No biggie, she’ll be back,’ whoa! Slow the f— down! You don’t know how durable she’s gonna be when she comes back. Holm hit her with everything but the kitchen sink in that first round. What’s it gonna be like in the second fight? What if Holm hits her with a shot and her legs buckle? Then we realize, ‘Oh s—, her chin’s not there anymore.’

Another question for Ronda, is what changes does she make, because she’s gotta make changes. She’s gotta make changes in her technical training, as far as expanding her repertoire, expanding her weapons, and her ability to deal with kicks. One of the things we saw in that fight was the oblique kick that Holly was landing. That’s a Winkeljohn staple. Wink is a bad motherf—er. I love that guy and I’m so impressed with his coaching. He’s such an in-the-shadows, humble guy that’s not trying to get attention.

Ronda’s got to go to a camp that has the full arsenal. She’s got to go to a Firas Zahabi or a Matt Hume, or someone like that, in my opinion. If I was talking to her, that’s what I would tell her. I’d say, ‘You can’t just train with a judo coach and Edmond holds the pads for you.’ Edmond has definitely done some great things for her boxing technique, that can’t be denied. Her combinations when she hits the pads are very impressive, but there are other elements that come with striking. It’s not just about throwing your hands and having the technique look good.

It’s also about how you set up combinations, how you lead an opponent into a setup, anticipating their reaction, and being prepared to counter that reaction, because you’re moving two and three steps ahead of them. I don’t know if he’s capable of doing that. I don’t think he ever competed at a very high level, and I don’t know how much he knows about other aspects of MMA.

What I see from him, as far as his boxing training, I’m impressed. He’s showing her some good combinations and has got her technique sharp, but there’s a lot to striking. When you’re incorporating kicks and knees and elbows, you’ve got to have a proven track record as a coach. You’ve got to have someone who understands very high level competition, and then they have to understand how to incorporate all the techniques of MMA, and then they have to have a deep understanding of the skillset of the person they’re coaching. That’s a lot to ask.

I think she needs someone who will objectively assess her game as an outsider, not someone like Edmond, who trained her from the beginning with mitts; she needs someone else, as well. She needs someone who is going to be able to look at the big picture of her overall MMA game, and then rebuild. She’s gonna need a massive overhaul. When we talk about MMA being high level problem solving, Holly Holm solved the problem. She had all the answers and she got a f—ing A+.

Now, Ronda comes away from that fight, and she got an F. She certainly got an A for effort. She came barn-storming after Holly in that first round, but was ultimately unsuccessful at all of her attempts. You can look at the couple punches she landed, but overall, Holly just dominated that fight. That was a stellar performance by Holly Holm.

The other advice to Ronda Rousey is you’ve got to figure out what you want to do. Do you want to be a gigantic celebrity or do you want to be the best fighter on the planet? Because if you want to be the best fighter on the planet, you have to pursue that only. I think with this movie bulls—, she could pull it off with some of the girls with all these distractions and all this nonsense, but I don’t think they allow her the amount of resources–mental, physical, everything…all of the above–??that she’s going to need at her disposal to be the very best that she can be. You don’t want to be good enough, you want to be the best that you can be. I don’t think she was the best that she could be. In my eyes, she was not properly prepared for that fight, whether physically or technically.

Read entire interview…

Part II coming Sunday!