Ronda Rousey opens up about suicidal thoughts, abuse by coaches and struggles with bulimia

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Former UFC champion Ronda Rousey is pulling no punches.

The MMA and WWE star went deep into her past during a podcast appearance this week, revealing that she struggled with suicidal thoughts, suffered abuse at the hands of coaches when she was young and had battles with bulimia and depression during her career.

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Rousey, 37, was incredibly candid Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast, sharing her troubled upbringing and struggles.

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She explained that her troubles started early in life, at just eight years old when her father took his own life after suffering a broken back and was told he would never recover.

“My dad passed when I was eight. I didn’t know, but he had broken his back in a sledding accident when we’d first moved to North Dakota and he had a rare blood disorder where he couldn’t heal from it.

“He had been receiving diagnoses basically saying he would become a paraplegic and then a quadriplegic and could eventually die.

“We didn’t know that he was going through this or dealing with chronic pain or anything like that.

“He ended up taking his life when I was eight … My whole world turned upside down.”

She also shared that her grandfather previously had taken his own life.

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Rousey said that she had suicidal thoughts of her own after her 2015 fight against Holly Holm, when she suffered a second-round knockout against the underdog.

She said it had been “depressing and soul crushing” leaving her with suicidal thoughts the moment the bout ended.

“It was basically instantly when I came backstage. Suicide is the kind of thing that becomes more prevalent if it’s in your family and I’ve literally had two generations of suicide ahead of me.

“It’s just something that is always an option in your mind once it’s shown to you.”

It was her relationship with husband Travis Browne, a fellow UFC fighter, that stopped her from acting on those thoughts, saying she didn’t want to pass that trauma onto someone else.

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Rousey also talked about dropping out of school at 16 to do judo full-time with coach Jim Pedros and how competing often caused her to struggle with bulimia.

“I remember the first time I did it. I had a childhood coach or something who took me out one day and he basically forced me to have a chocolate shake.

“I felt so guilty about the chocolate shake and I had to make weight that weekend, there was no way I would be able to make it.

“I made myself throw up the chocolate shake and it was cold, it didn’t hurt, it wasn’t that bad.

“I thought it was a one-time thing, but the next time I like ate too much and I felt really guilty about it … I felt like it was the only thing I could do.”

As she grew older, Rousey claims that she suffered numerous concussions but continually was pushed to continue training.

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“People didn’t really know about CTE back when I was doing judo and I would get concussions all the time,” the athlete explained.

“’My head hurts, I have photo vision.’ I would say stuff like that and they would just say ‘stop being a p**** and keep training.’

“I would get dozens and dozens of concussions and never be allowed to stop.”

“I would have to keep training through them and the symptoms would persist for weeks to the point that I was experiencing concussion symptoms more often than I wasn’t for a 10-year judo career.”

And that wasn’t the only abuse that she suffered during training from her coaches.

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“Honestly I can’t think of single coach that I had a great relationship with,” Ronda admitted.

“A lot of the coaches were of that generation where they thought that being abusive to the athletes is what gave them the best result and that was kind of what was in vogue at the time.”

Rousey also says that she was made an example of by a coach.

“My first coach literally dislocated my jaw. I was a little kid, I threw him once in front of everybody and laughed because I thought it was awesome.

“He threw me on the benches on top of the table at everybody else’s feet in front of all these people.

“Big Jim had grabbed me by the throat before to drive his point home that women can’t defend themselves. This is behaviour that I have been conditioned to tolerate since I was a little girl.”

Rousey’s book, Our Fight, is available now.

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