Ronda Rousey Still Isn’t Over Her Knockout Loss

Ronda Rousey, as a UFC fighter, might just seem like she got into her line of work to f**k s**t up. Since winning the title as UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion in 2015 and losing that very same title in 2016, Rousey has shown us she’s so much more than just a brute. In her 13 fights as professional fighter, Rousey has only lost one match….. and it was a knockout. For anyone with any pride still pumping through their heart, it’s not the knockout that hurts, it’s the disappointment. Sitting down for a profile interview for her rank on Time‘s “The 100 Most Influential People,” Rousey talks these complexities through with Tina Fey. Getting raw on camera, Rousey opens up about the emotional loss:

I hope people remember me as one of the greatest fighters that ever lived … but I don’t know if they will. I’m still grieving the person that could have won it all, but I have to live up to the fact that I’m not her. That’s just who I wanted to be, and instead I’m what I need to be for myself and everyone else.

I’m still grieving the person I could have been had I lived up to all the potential elementary school teachers saw in me. But here I am, in the same bathrobe I’ve been in for the last 3 days, thighs glued together by my own sweaty secretions, writing about a woman who too knows what it’s like to fall out of their own grace. What happens when you stop being the elite wonder you always considered yourself to be? What happens when the empirical evidence doesn’t match up with the ego? It seems almost impossible to restore faith in oneself, but Rousey is lucky in that regard. Her emotional support comes everywhere. Everywhere people look up to her. And it’s because of this support that Rousey says we can expect much more from her. She says:

I have this wall in my house, it’s right outside my bathroom. It’s all the good things I put up there, like little girl letters. Like the cutest, sweetest, most like adorable things, you know? And I’d tape them all over my wall, that’s my inspiration back to me. It’s like all the words from all those people that reached out to me that I’m somehow helping them and they’re really helping me back.

You can expect to see Rousey back in the ring later this year.