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From March 27, 2011 to August 1, 2015, a span of 12 fights, Ronda Rousey looked pretty much unbeatable in mixed martial arts.
She had steamrolled over everyone she had fought up to that point except for Miesha Tate (the second time around), winning nine of her 12 fights inside of a minute (and one at 1:06).
Then Ronda Rousey met Holly Holm in a UFC Women’s Bantamweight title defense at UFC 193 and the wheels quickly came off what was once considering by many to be a historical MMA career.
Rousey would lose that fight to Holm by knockout at 59 seconds into the first round.
In her next fight, against Amanda Nunes for the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship, Rousey would again be defeated inside of a minute.
Then she retired from mixed martial arts.
Ronda Rousey explained last week that a series of concussions dating back to her judo days, which she tried to keep hidden, were part of her eventual downfall.
“It got to the point where if I was getting touched at all, if I was getting jabbed, I was starting to get concussion symptoms and I couldn’t tell my coach about it,” Rousey told Cageside Seats this week. “I couldn’t tell Dana [White] about it. ‘Cause, they would retire me. They wouldn’t let me fight. And I wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to admit that I couldn’t do everything perfectly. ‘Cause that’s what I had to believe to be able to be at that level.”
But there were other, more bizarre reasons for her career-defining UFC title loss to Holly Holm.
First, she wasn’t even supposed to be fighting that night.
The UFC 193 main event was supposed to be a Welterweight Championship fight between Robbie Lawler and Carlos Condit.
When Lawler suffered an injury, UFC asked Ronda Rousey to move up her title fight with Holly Holm, which was supposed to occur at UFC 195, to fill the void. Which she did.
Based on what she claims, Rousey was almost doomed from the minute she made that concession.
It turns out that two weeks before the fight with Holm, Rousey slipped down a flight of stairs, knocked herself unconscious and suffered an ACL injury.
Then, on fight night, Ronda Rousey says she entered the octagon with the wrong mouthguard.
“The first time I got touched in that fight, it knocked all my bottom teeth loose and I was completely out on my feet the entire fight,” Rousey said. “I couldn’t see how far away she was from me, if that makes sense. And [I was] not seeing things as quickly. Usually when I fight, time dilates and I see everything in slow motion. This was like I was in like a fog where I couldn’t tell a range or anything.”
That was the beginning of the end as a little over a year later her MMA career was finished.