Ronda Rousey has said her four-year-old daughter is already showing a desire to follow in her footsteps, with the UFC Hall of Famer training for a fight for the first time as a mother.
Rousey last fought in 2016 having suffered back-to-back knockout losses to Holly Holm and then Amanda Nunes before leaving UFC, going on to perform for WWE until leaving finally in 2023.
She had her first daughter, La’akea Makalapuaokalanipō, in September 2021 before finishing up with WWE and having her second daughter, Liko’ula Pā’ūomahinakaipiha, in January 2025.
With her return to MMA booked for May 16 against Gina Carano on Netflix, she was asked by “Us Weekly” how being a mother has changed the training camp experience.
“Pō loves being on the mat,” she explained about her eldest. “She’s gonna be so sad when we take the cage out, because it’s like a gigantic playpen for them, and she loves to watch me train.”
“She’s usually such a hyper kid,” she continued. “But man, when I’m training, she just sits there and watches, transfixed. She definitely wants to fight and has been asking me to.”
Rousey said that she had watched other kids practicing jiu-jitsu and said she wanted to do it too.
“I was like, ‘You will,’ I don’t want to push her in it too early,” she added.
Rousey herself is a second-generation judoka with her mother, AnnMaria, a gold medalist at the World Judo Championships in Vienna, Austria, in 1984. And an International Sports Hall of Famer inducted in 2016. Rousey’s husband, Travis Browne, is also a former MMA fighter last competing at heavyweight in UFC.
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