Ronda Rousey has shed more light on the neurological problems she says led to the end of her UFC career in 2016. If her claims are true, doctors probably shouldn’t have cleared her for either one of her final two MMA fights.
During an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show this week to promote her upcoming fight against Gina Carano, Ronda Rousey expounded on what she was going through physically prior to her final two UFC fights.
“I was dealing with these neurological issues for such a long time, and I didn’t understand what was going on,” Rousey told Helwani. “They were getting worse and worse and worse. It just finally came to a head in that fight [against Holly Holm]. I just felt like it finally caught up to me, and my career was over. It was more than just losing a fight. It was, ‘Man, I can’t fight anymore.’
“There’s a lot of people that think I’m making it up or don’t believe me,” she continued. “Neurological problems are an injury that nobody else can see, and I think what I hated most about it was the very first time I got hit in that [Holm] fight, it knocked all my lower teeth loose and cut my lip open. I got this huge migraine aura, a big chunk of my vision missing, like losing my depth perception and ability to think clearly, quickly and track moving objects, but I was still on my feet and balanced. I’ve been trained my whole life to not show hurt, then they’re going to capitalize and know [if I show them]. So that entire fight was just me trying to hide the fact that I couldn’t see or think.”
Ronda Rousey has apparently recovered from the serious neurological issues she was dealing with in 2015
In 2024, Ronda Rousey said that a series of concussions that she kept hidden contributed to her downfall. She also claimed that two weeks prior to her UFC 193 title loss to Holly Holm, she slipped down a flight of stairs, knocked herself unconscious and suffered an ACL injury. Rousey also said that during that fight, she entered the octagon that night with the wrong mouthguard.
Then, in 2025, Rousey added that she dealt with temporary blindness and migraines as a result of her fighting career.
“Two of my triggers (are) bright lights and head impacts, so I’d get hit and I’d basically lose big chunks of my vision and my depth perception and my ability to track movements quickly and make snap decisions, which is basically all the things that I need and I thought I have a concussion,” she said in an interview with UNTAPPED. “I’m out on my feet, but I wouldn’t be stumbling around. I didn’t lose my balance. This was like, I had to retire because this kept happening to me more and more often to the point where I would get a jab and I would basically go blind.”
She added during that 2025 interview that after consulting with doctors, she discovered the root causes of her problems. She also said that it was unlikely that she would ever fight again. Now, however, she says doctors were able to remedy her neurological issues with medication because, at age 39 and 10 years later, she will fight once again on Saturday night.