UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is as you read this most likely engaged in media duties down under. In an interview with ABC.net.au, she talked about what she has learned from fighting.

“Experiences like (losing her father to suicide) can make or break a person. And they effect you in such a strong way that it’s a fine line between whether it effects you negatively or positively. And because of martial arts I was able to make it a positive.

“Everything that I’ve learned from fighting, I’ve been able to apply to my life outside of it. And I think the main lesson I get from it is, it taught me to be brave, and it taught me to value myself.”

So how brave is Ronda Rousey?

“You once said you are willing to die in there,” noted the reporter. “Is that true? You wouldn’t tap out first?”

Rousey replied without hesitation.

“No,” she said.

“Once I got caught in a neck crank, in my first UFC fight. And it was in that moment that I had to make that decision. Possibly if I didn’t tap out, I could hurt my neck, I could be a quadriplegic. Anybody else, anyone sane, would have tapped out. 

“But in that moment, it mattered too much to me. It didn’t even cross my mind to give up.”

Rousey was asked if she ever gets scared?

“Scared? Yeah, I mean I’m full of fear but without any doubt. I’m so afraid of failure that I work harder than any of these girls possibly could.”

“There’s a lot of meaning to the word fight. It doesn’t just mean two people trying to hit each other. It can be applied to anything.

“It can be applied to you fighting to be a respected journalist, it can be applied to a single mother fighting to have a good environment for her kid to grow up in. Everybody’s fighting.

“And that’s why it’s a metaphor for life.”