Former UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey was seemingly unbeatable. Then she lost.
Rousey and Holly Holm went into UFC 193 both undefeated but on very different sides of the fence. Rousey was the UFC’s biggest star, the biggest star in MMA and one of the biggest stars in all of sports. She even started to break out of sports and was mentioned amongst mainstream pop culture. She appeared in big movies like Fast And Furious and Entourage. Holm, she was a former boxing champion who had only two fights in the UFC and didn’t exactly blow anyone away with those fights. She wasn’t in big time hollywood movies, she wasn’t on morning talk shows. She was the fighter that everyone expected Rousey to run threw before she went away and made a few more movies. That didn’t happen. Rousey ended up getting KO’d with a big head kick in the second round of their fight.
A lot of times, since it is a person vs. person sport, fans and media don’t really think too much about those around the fighters, their family, friends and loved ones.
In a new piece, written for VICE, Rousey’s older sister, Maria Burns Ortiz, wrote a pretty heartfelt article about life after UFC 193 and what it was like to watch her sister lose like that.
Check out some of it below:
“I haven’t rewatched it. I haven’t read about it. I won’t. I don’t see a point in reliving the moment when a part of my loved one died, when I saw someone I cared about have her soul crushed.”
“I saw how horrible people can be to someone they don’t even know, which made me even more appreciative when I saw how wonderfully Ronda’s friends and family treated her. Those are the people that matter.”
“The world watched Ronda fall, but I have had the opportunity to watch her get back up. To be proud of her and happy for her when she wins, and to be proud of her and concerned for her when she loses. To tell her that I loved her just as much in the moments after the fight as I had in the moments before. To put my arm around her and try to protect her. To push aside the negativity. To help her get back up. Not just in the past few weeks but in the past 28 years.”
“When some people reflect on Ronda and 2015, they will see it defined by a single event. They see it as the end. And in some ways, they’re right—but that only means we’re at a new beginning.”
