Original subtitles

No-one can touch me,

no-one can beat me,

no-one could even get close to me.

Everyone's always going to define me by my failures

but I know that I created the most efficient fighting style

that ever existed and I'm proud of that.

Ronda Rousey is an icon of the mixed martial arts world

and a trailblazer for women in combat sport,

an Olympic medallist in judo...

COMMENTATOR: Ronda Rousey,

the USA's first women's Olympic medallist.

..the first woman to win

an Ultimate Fighting Championship title,

a professional wrestler...

..now a TV personality and Hollywood actress

and a regenerative farm owner.

But despite Ronda's seismic success and achievements,

she's had to embrace deep challenges

throughout her career -

something she hasn't shared openly until now.

I always thought that I could will my body

to do whatever I needed it to do

and it was at that point it just kind of quit on me.

Sometimes, when you're the only woman in the room,

it's easy to feel out of place,

but you have a right to be there.

To understand her incredible journey,

you've got to go back in time.

What's the first memory

where you felt fighting would be a part of your life?

Oh, God.

Erm, it was actually the first day that I did judo.

My mom went to go visit all of her old team-mates

that she used to train with in the '80s in Los Angeles

and, erm, I was a swimmer then

and it was at Mojica Judo in Baldwin Park.

I jumped on the mat and, erm, Blinky was my first coach,

I remember I got off the mat and he was like,

"It's a lot more fun than swimming, isn't it?"

And I was like, "Yeah!

"I want to win the Olympics in this now."

And I was just, you know, I always assumed that when

I was a swimmer, I was going to win the Olympics in swimming,

and then when I found judo and I loved it, I was, like,

OK, I'm going to win the Olympics in this now.

That was just the kind of expectation

that was put in our minds in our families.

Whatever you're going to do, you're going to be the best at

it because you're exceptional, and I just assumed that.

My mom was the first American world champion in judo,

and the first American world champion was a woman,

and it was her, and having her just walk through

the living room made it feel so much more attainable for me

to want to do just as much, even more.

COMMENTATOR: And she's done.

Ronda Rousey, the daughter of the USA's

first women's world champion,

is now the USA's first women's Olympic medallist.

One thing that's required in order to be a special champion

is you have to be willing to get your heart broken.

Ever since I was a little kid, I had a huge problem with it,

and I lost my first Junior Nationals

and I locked myself in my bedroom and cried for a week.

I was 13 years old...

SHE LAUGHS

..and other parents would, like, you know, erm,

would whisper about, like,

"It's not healthy for her to be...", you know,

"..so upset and cry so much when she loses."

And a lot of people thought it was my mom

putting too much pressure on me.

But, erm, it was because it was so important to me.

My mom, she wouldn't tell me, like, not to be upset

because she wanted me to care and not to try and, like,

protect myself from it by not caring as much

because that was one of the weapons that I had.

One of the advantages that I had over the other girls

that I was fighting is that I wanted it more than them.

And to put everything that you have into something

in order to see whether or not your best is good enough,

most people will hold back from ever doing their best

because they always want to have it in the back

of their mind if they fail,

"Oh, I wasn't really trying as hard as I could."

And, erm, I think that's one thing that made me great

is because I was willing to get my heart broken

over and over and over again, and not allow myself

to stop caring as much as I did.

And so, naturally, through fighting,

Ronda felt she could have a positive influence.

After winning Olympic bronze in 2008,

she had her sights firmly on a career in mixed martial arts

and the hugely popular Ultimate Fighting Championship...

..a fighters' league that didn't have any women.

Driven by the words of UFC President Dana White

never to sign a woman, Ronda had other ideas.

I was trying to convince my mom to, like, not disown me

for doing MMA because she didn't think it was

a viable career option, and it did not help my argument.

That was my first thought.

I'm, like, oh, this has not helped my argument with my mom.

I saw what Dana White said, I'm, like,

my mom is not going to be in favour of this now.

When I first saw it, my first thought was, like,

oh, well, he hasn't met me yet so it's fine.

You just don't know.

So, yeah, I just felt like a matter of time

before our paths would cross and I'd change his mind.

And it worked.

Ronda became the first woman to sign a UFC contract.

They say the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy

without fighting.

Well, that's exactly what Ronda did.

With an impressive run of ten emphatic victories,

Ronda's rise and sheer dominance within the UFC

seemed unstoppable,

but, hidden from the public eye,

Ronda was battling something infinitely more challenging.

Every time you get a concussion, it's easier to get

another one, and for, you know, ten years of my judo career,

I was experiencing concussion symptoms more often than not

because I wasn't allowed to rest.

I would get a concussion and then have to keep training

and taking, you know, many impacts every night

and just re-aggravating it over and over and over again,

so, erm, it got to a point where when I came into MMA,

I wasn't able to take hits like someone that hadn't been

walking around with concussion for ten years,

and so I had to develop a style of fighting, erm,

that I believe is the most efficient

that's ever been made

and with the expressed objective of avoiding damage.

I think that all of my limitations

really forced me to be better, you know?

Tearing out my knee when I was young made me great at armbars

and, erm, you know, having the concussion history that I had

forced me to be really quick and efficient

and, you know, try to finish off people very quickly

in every single match.

So it wasn't...it wasn't an accident or luck,

it was something I was very much doing on purpose

until, you know, it got to a point where I literally

couldn't get touched without being out on my feet,

and, erm, I think that I...

..I shouldn't be fighting at the top level.

If I can take you back to the day of that fight,

what was your feelings walking into the ring for that fight?

And then, with what happened,

your feelings walking out of the ring?

Erm, it just felt like everything was going wrong.

I was literally going into that match concussed.

I fell down the stairs, knocked myself out.

I tore my ACL two weeks before that fight.

I had the worst weight cut that I ever had.

I was just so stressed and overworked.

Like, my body was just holding on to weight.

My kidneys were aching.

I had the wrong mouth guard

that didn't have the back to the bottom teeth.

It just felt like everything was so stacked against me.

I was trying so hard just to block everything out

and just be, like, just get through this.

Just get in there, do what you do, you're going to be fine.

The first time I got touched in the match,

it knocked all my bottom teeth loose

and I was completely out on my feet, and I could only see

in two dimensions with big splotches in my eyes.

I kept telling myself, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine.

Just keep coming forward, you'll get to do another round,

you'll be able to recover, and...

..it was just, erm...

It's hard looking back at footage in that match

because I can see in my eyes that I am literally suffering

from a neurological injury decades in the making

and there's one point where I saw that, like,

I took, like, a wild swing and I couldn't see where she was

and I completely missed and kept going into the cage

and fell into the cage and all this stuff.

People see that and they're, like,

"This is Ronda being outclassed",

and I'm, like, "That's me with my brain not properly working.

"If you know how I am as a fighter, I would never

"lose my balance and keep falling like that."

You can see the look on my face,

that I'm just trying to look like I'm OK.

I had been hiding concussions and neurological injuries

for so long, it just became part of it,

and that was the point where I was forced

to really self assess and be, like...

..your brain has just taken too much damage for too many years

and even though I've never been faster, never been stronger,

never had a better grasp of the game,

I just neurologically cannot take these impacts

and perform at the highest level, which is...

..so difficult to be able to do

because I'd really never been better.

And, erm, I always thought that I could will my body

to do whatever I needed it to do,

and it was at that point that, erm...

..it just kind of quit on me.

With one more loss and personal concerns over her health,

Ronda decided to walk away from the sport

for perspective and healing.

Now, removed from it, I can kind of be proud of myself

and be, like, no-one can touch me, no-one can beat me,

no-one could even get close to me until it got to the point

where even being touched put me out. Mm-hm.

And, erm, now I can be proud of that,

even though, you know, I don't think

I'll be remembered as that.

It really feels like everyone's always going to define me

by my failures, but I know that I created the most efficient

fighting style that ever existed and I'm proud of that.

Ronda, how hard was it to pick yourself up,

you know, mentally, physically, spiritually, even?

Erm, I mean, it...

SHE LAUGHS

It wasn't easy. It took a lot of time.

Love and kisses from my husband... Of course.

..and patience from my family and everything like that.

But I really appreciated that no-one tried to

rush me through it, but Trav also didn't enable,

erm, my worst tendencies.

You know, like, I just wanted to be a hermit

and never show my face,

and he would force me to go outside and see the sun.

I'm just going to throw him forward.

This takes no effort from me.

He was great at not letting me, like,

just fall into my little hole.

There were just things where I couldn't even

watch fights without being... without crying,

and he just slowly started exposing me to MMA again

and putting the heavyweights on for him to watch.

Aw!

Sorry, babe! Yeah, she's going to take care of me!

And he even made our GPS voice an Australian accent...

SHE LAUGHS

..cos he didn't want me to have any hang-ups about Australia.

So, to this day, we still have an Australian GPS.

But just little things like that

that he did to kind of make me, you know,

laugh at my demons until they went away.

And to keep those demons away, Ronda needed

a completely different challenge.

She found it in professional wrestling.

I am just a big nerd for choreography

and combat storytelling and that kind of stuff.

That's one thing that really drew me towards pro wrestling,

because I feel like it's almost the purest form of that

because it's not like a movie where you set up a fight

and you film a punch from one angle and then you reset it.

You have to, like, perform the whole fight at once

and have everything that you do sell from 360 degrees.

CHEERING

I feel like I've learned so much from judo and UFC

and pro wrestling that...

I mean, I would love to be the next Bruce Lee.

I don't know if it's ever going to come along,

but also nobody wrote Enter the Dragon and handed it to him.

You know, he had to go out there and make it happen.

I love you, handsome.

FIREWORKS EXPLODE

Being a fighter was always Ronda's sole identity,

but something on the horizon for both her

and her husband Travis would change their whole perspective.

You know, whenever I was in fight camp, I was forced to

become a small fraction of my personality.

Just, you know, Ronda the UFC champion,

Ronda the fighter.

I only saw myself as that.

The whole world only saw me as that.

And, erm...

..I would kind of, like, miss the rest of myself

and almost, like, forget it.

And I used to think I was a really chill,

laid back kind of a person,

but then again I was comparing myself to my mom, and then

I found out that, actually, I'm pretty, you know, intense.

But outside of fighting,

I guess I'm a very, very different person,

and, erm...

..that wasn't all of me, even though that was

all that I thought anyone wanted to see.

Look at these feet.

You won't understand it till you're older,

but when you're older, you'll be like, "That was cool, Mama."

I mean, you can't describe it, I think,

and you'll never know, sorry.

SHE LAUGHS

But to, like, grow something inside of your body

and, like, you know, feel it and talk to it,

and, erm...

..it's not just you have a big belly and it's out,

like, you feel that there is something alive inside of you.

Who is that little baby?

Is that you?

Yeah?

It was just, like, incredible to finally be able to meet her.

Oh, my gosh. I love you.

It's indescribable.

You know, your peak athletic years

are your peak reproductive years and I saw my mom

having three kids and working three jobs

and at one point she was making only enough money

from her career to be able to pay for childcare

while she was working, and that's what she had to do

in order to advance her career, was basically work for nothing.

I was really inspired by the fact she was able to do that,

but I also didn't want to have to juggle being a mom

and trying to build my career at the same time,

so I'm glad that I waited because now I can give 100%

of my time and energy to my kids

and not worry about how I'm going to keep the lights on.

But, erm, yeah, it definitely came with its own challenges.

Look at you...

Look at you.

Look how beautiful you are.

My perception of the world since having a daughter?

Erm, yeah, I just like...

I feel like that's one reason why regenerative ranching

and everything we're doing is so important,

because I'm trying...we're trying to leave solutions

for our kids and not just a pile of money

that's lit on fire, you know?

And, erm... So it just makes everything that we're doing

with Browsey Acres so much more important.

Longevity in the ring is uncertain, but building

an environment that is safe, nurturing and sustainable

is what Ronda and Travis hope for their daughter.

Hi, Bob.

They created Browsey Acres,

a regenerative farm that aims to provide just that.

He knows.

He knows it's going to help him.

We took this land that was really, you know,

degraded and neglected and mismanaged -

it was more dirt than it was grass -

and just started working with our animals, you know,

raising them regeneratively and mimicking these natural

processes and bringing a whole ecosystem to life

and really being, like, stewards of the land

and, you know, seeing it come to its fullest potential.

And that was the most self-validating thing

that we've ever done.

We were doing it together and it was just so much

more fulfilling than constantly looking for hits of that,

you know, outside validation.

We're trying to address these crises that she's inevitably

going to have to face in her lifetime.

And, like, climate change is something that really,

like, weighs on my worries for my children in the future,

and so, erm, it just makes it seem so much more important

for us to try and do something about it.

This is what I feel deserves all of our time and energy

cos every single bit that we put into it

is like us putting into our children.

I'm going to plant some basil that I got from the store

with a root ball attached.

This is really healthy dirt so I'm just going to throw it in

without any potting soil or anything.

My goal is for these to all flower and seed

and for all edible plants to be covering this hill

so we're not just constantly weeding it...

I was really excited when I finally got a plant to grow,

and then it was immediately eaten by a squirrel.

SHE LAUGHS

So then the next time I got a little tiny sprout,

I put, like, I call it Fort Knox, around it,

and, yeah, it was just the first time I'd been focusing

on where I had succeeded instead of where I'd failed,

which is something that you have to do when you're trying

to learn from wins and...

But, yeah, it...it just kind of took me outside of that...

..that mindset, because not everything

is the Olympic finals, but I'd been treating my whole life

as if it was in preparation for that since I was six,

and it's hard to break out of it.

You can go anywhere you want, but...

..keep our property, bud.

Ronda may have made a name for herself in the ring,

but her journey continues to evolve beyond.

Widely regarded as the first to force a women's division

in the UFC, Ronda's message and ability to empower women

through combat sport is undisputed.

Oh, I'm just happy to see it in motion because I would feel

so personally offended that women in combat sports

weren't given the respect that they deserve.

I think I was able to showcase a couple of things

that I felt like women's combat sports was missing,

which was showmanship.

A lot of times when women come into a space

where they're not entirely welcome,

they try to make as few waves as possible,

and I felt like I needed to make as many as possible

in order to fight for our place there

instead of politely asking for permission for it.

Being the person in front to, like, break the wind

for everybody behind me, it kind of, erm...

..proved the concept and gave other women confidence

to do the same in their own way.

Ronda, why was it important for you to create a space

for women in this sport?

I think it's important because sports are a metaphor for life

and, erm, I feel like combat sports especially,

they're so character revealing.

It doesn't matter what your misconceptions

about men or women or big or small or anything is,

when you see a fighter being excellent and digging deep

and being put through adversity...

I feel like every fight is a life in miniature

that you just kind of get to see, like, a speed run of it.

And it's a great equaliser and revealer of character.

I think that everybody should be able to have

that opportunity to show that.

If you're, you know, a woman that doesn't get

the same respect as a man, if you go out there and you fight

and you give it your all,

anybody with half a brain has to respect that.

I think that every generation is making it easier

for the generation afterward,

and so I would love for the next generation of girls,

my daughter, even, to see what's been done before them

and know it's entirely possible

for them to do that and exceed it.

You have a right to be there.

Sometimes, when you're the only woman in the room,

it's easy to not feel like that -

to feel out of place, but you are in your place.

Being the first is a lonely path

and many will never truly fathom the meteoric trajectory

and variety of Ronda Rousey's career.

Perseverance, personality, discipline and excellence

almost certainly the key to her success.

Surely these attributes are the ingredients

for a bona fide trailblazer of modern day sport.

But even in those dark moments, Ronda's fighting spirit

allowed her to find peace in order to navigate challenges

and transcend barriers.

She more than proved her worth in the ring

but it's her exploits and legacy beyond that show

she will always be so much more than a fighter.