I'm a big crier. I never cry when something is painful, but I cry if things are frustrating. Like if I'm trying to do something, and I mess up over and over. If I'm playing a video game, and I can't beat a level that I've tried 10 times, I'll cry. When I was a kid, I think I cried for every practice from 2003 to the middle of 2006.
— Ronda Rousey
I've separated my shoulder and my collarbone; I've messed up my knee a million times. I've broken my foot in several places. I've broken my toe a bunch, broken my nose a couple of times, and had a bunch of other annoying little injuries, like turf toe and arthritis and tendonitis. It's part of the game.
I'm the biggest draw in the sport, and I'm a woman.
Every chick I try to intimidate in a different way. You have to think about their personality. You have to think about what would get under that particular person's skin the most.
The best way to take a punch is to look at it. Honestly. Someone could hit you with the hardest punch that they have, but as long as you see it, it's not going to knock you out. It's the punches that you don't see that knock you out. So you could get tapped with a small punch, but if you don't see it, you're out.
I'm a huge fan of wrestling, and I would like to see the position of women in the sport continue to improve, so if I can be a part of it, great.
I don't think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests.
I go to bed every night thinking about all the possible ways that I can succeed.
Nobody's easy until after you beat them.
I wasn't always the most fashionable, and I would come to school with cauliflower ear and ringworm. I got made fun of a lot. People called me 'Miss Man' and 'Guns,' and people directed a lot of karate jokes at me. I wish that I was at school now that MMA and martial arts is cool, but back when I was in school, people associated it with nerdy stuff.
Judo was one of those sports where they give you guidelines but then try to tell you to develop your own style.
I just want to tailgate, drink beer, and hang out in the middle of nowhere in a pick-up truck. That's my ideal date.
I had a lot of trouble speaking as a kid. I didn't really speak in coherent sentences until I was, like, 6 years old. There was a long time where everybody was very worried, because my sisters were so advanced for their age, and I would barely talk.
I grew up as an athlete doing judo, so I didn't really have a conventional, feminine body type.
I like quoting 'Lord of the Rings': 'My list of allies grows thin! My list of enemies grows long!'
That's the thing I'm worst at: resting. I have to be forced to do it. Sometimes I think of loopholes. 'Oh, I'm just going for a walk, up a dune that's 45 degrees, but I'm walking, so it's not a workout.'
There's something so zen-like and grateful of just ripping a hot wing apart and getting it all over your face, and everyone's happy. I love that atmosphere.
Confidence is the number one thing I find attractive.
At the end of the day, I can't curl up with people's opinions.
There are so many ridiculous arguments that MMA is somehow anti-woman.
I wasn't allowed to throw big hooks and overhand rights until I'd been striking for three years. It's so you don't rely on those things from the very beginning. If your footwork sucks, and you can only stand in one place and throw your hands all crazy while the other person is running around, you're never going to be able to hit them.
Some girls sit around and watch 'Gossip Girl' together. Me and my girlfriends watch 'Raw' and 'SmackDown.'
I'm voting for Bernie Sanders because he doesn't take any corporate money.
There's no way to recover after tarnishing an undefeated record.
It took a lot of time to develop a healthier relationship with food and with my weight.
A lot of people, once they become champion, they relax, kind of sit in the position and try to enjoy it. But I feel like everything I've ever worked for could be lost at any moment. I work harder and harder and harder, because I want to be farther ahead with every fight, and not worrying about these girls catching up to me.
Kids don't like what they don't understand, and judo was always my social outlet. I always felt really socially awkward, and I couldn't speak very well when I was younger. When I was doing judo, it was something that I could understand and someplace where I felt that I belonged and fit in.
Buffalo wings and cider is all I need.
I just like when a guy dresses for comfort, to be honest. If he takes longer to get ready than I do, that's a deal breaker.
I'm scared of failure so much more than any of the other girls I compete against that I work so much harder than they possibly could. I'm totally down with spiders and frogs and heights and snakes - everything; I'm cool with it.
At 150 pounds, I feel like I'm at my healthiest and my strongest and my most beautiful.
See, for some reason, I feel like it's a victory if I wake up one minute before the alarm. It's like I'm in a contest with myself, with my foot kicking around until it wakes up the rest of my body. It's the stupidest thing. But it makes me feel like I've already won something.
When women say that going on publications directed at men is somehow demeaning, I don't think that's true. I think that's one really effective way to change the societal standard women are held to.
After I defended my title the first time when I beat Sarah Kaufman, I went back to my room, and my friend ordered all these trays of hot wings. They came into the room, and the little hotel sheet thing was draped over it, and I go to open it up, and it's breaded and boneless. I cried.
I'm unbelievably ticklish. When I was a little kid, my sisters would hold me down and tickle me until I peed my pants.
I'm very anti-domestic violence.
Fighting is not a man's thing, it is a human thing.
I spent the whole first year of my career just on my legs. If you have good legs under you, then you can punch. Anybody can stand and throw their hands and look like an idiot. If you actually want to learn how to punch, you have to work on being balanced on your legs and feeling your legs under you. Feel the ground.
I'm really encouraged by the progress I've seen with what they're doing with the women in WWE, but I feel like there's a lot more than can be done.
To be honest, in 2012, I was against both candidates, and so I just picked any third party because I thought if more people voted for third parties then they'd have to take third parties seriously.
I might make an investment and lose some money, but that's something I can recover from.
I was in a weight-cutting sport, in judo, so I had to be a certain weight on a deadline. It kind of pushed me into having a really unhealthy relationship with food in my teens. I felt like if I wasn't exactly on weight, I wasn't good-looking.
Somehow, people act like I have no competition, but the thing is, the competition is so good that it forces me to be better than I even thought was possible.
I make fractals. They're like mathematical pictures. My stepdad is actually a rocket scientist, so in his free time, he gave me a fractal program for fun. He showed me how to use it when I was about nine or 10, and I made thousands of fractals.
I love waking up to Sunday morning pancakes. The whole process of making them, just out in the kitchen together making pancakes on a Sunday morning; that's an experience every girl should have.
I was painfully shy for a long time. I mean, that's something I really had to work my way out of. And I really think it was because, after the 2008 Olympics, I spent a whole year bartending. It was the one thing that really forced me to be just not so scared to start conversations with strangers.
My life is so active, and I'm fighting the whole day that I don't have any aggressiveness or any energy outside of fighting. I'm the most chill couch potato you could ever meet.
I only have so much ring time that my body can endure. I've had four surgeries on my knees, arthritis in my neck, separated my shoulders, broken my nose. I'm just gonna hope that science advances faster than I can deteriorate. Because what am I gonna do? Put a perfect body into the ground? What's the point of that?
People call me a whole lot of things, but above anything else, I'm a fighter, and it's going to be hard to accept an identity without that.
If I can represent that body type of women that isn't represented so much in media, then I'd be happy to do that.
