Ronda Rousey is returning to fight again for the first time in nearly a decade, but her comeback raised more than a few questions after she repeatedly stated that her career ended in large part due to repeated concussions.
Long before she was a UFC champion, Rousey revealed that she started suffering concussions while swimming as a child and then the issues only grew more troublesome while she was competing in judo, which included a bronze medal run in the Olympics. Back-to-back knockout losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes served as the final fights of her UFC career but a chance to face Gina Carano had Rousey motivated to seek out some answers to see if she could compete again.
Initially, Rousey reached out to UFC CEO Dana White to ask about his interest in promoting the fight, but he first wanted to know if she was even health enough to return to action.
“When I first approached Dana, he was like ‘first of all I want to make sure that you’re OK,’” Rousey told The Jim Rome Show. “He sent me to the Cleveland Clinic where they have a longterm neurological fighter study going on. They checked me, did every single test possible to check me, and I actually finally got a positive diagnosis.
“Because we’ve never been able to figure out what’s going on with me and basically from lighter and lighter hits I’m getting concussion symptoms. I lose big chunks of my vision, my depth perception and ability to think clearly. Dr. [Charles] Bernick at the Cleveland Clinic said ‘I’ve listened to all of your symptoms, I’ve looked at all of your scans, your brain looks great.’”
According to Rousey, that led doctors to take a deeper look at her history with concussions as well as repeatedly suffering from migraines throughout her life.
“I was telling him about my history and as a kid I would get migraines all the time and epilepsy runs in my family,” Rousey explained. “Every generation of my family, someone’s had epilepsy and there’s some sort of link between epilepsy and migraines. He was saying that people that get migraines are more susceptible to getting concussions, and the more concussions I get, the easier it is to get a migraine.
“What he thinks is happening is that I’m not actually getting a concussion every single time that this is happening. He thinks it’s setting off what’s called migraine aura where you just lose big chunks of your vision and it’s called cortical spreading depression. Where I guess your neurons get overly excited and depolarize and shut down in a wave and that’s why I lose chunks of my vision when I’m getting hit.”
That was understandably great news to receive when it came to her longterm health because it sounded like Rousey wasn’t suffering from any severe brain damage.
The downside was trying to find a treatment that would prevent the symptoms from springing back up again if Rousey got punched in a fight.
“To me I was like I’m not dying! CTE isn’t coming to get me!” Rousey said. “There’s actually stuff we can do about it. At first we couldn’t find any preventative migraine medication, it’s usually stuff to be used after the fact. Just recently we’ve been able to find something that I can take that’s preventative that will hopefully be able to resolve this issue for me. It’s life changing.
“Of course, I’m going to be going into the fight with the intention of not getting hit once because that’s basically what I’ve had to do my entire career.”
While Rousey didn’t end up staging her return with the UFC after she couldn’t come to terms with the promotion a deal that she found financially satisfying, she still gives White credit for getting her the help she needs to fight again.
“Thanks to Dana sending me to the Cleveland Clinic, I finally got a positive diagnosis and really know what’s going on and have some actionable knowledge to work off of,” Rousey said.
Regardless of the good news regarding Rousey’s health, California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster has already stated that she will undergo extensive medical testing — the same as Carano — to clear them before fighting on May 16.
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