No One Knows Whether Ronda Rousey Still Wants to Fight

 

How is a fighter supposed to sound after a big defeat? This past March, Conor McGregor, the brash Irish sensation, was pummelled and then choked into submission by Nate Diaz, a crafty veteran who was also a big underdog. In the cage after the fight, McGregor sounded as if he had already convinced himself that the catastrophic loss was no big deal. “I was inefficient with my energy,” he said, with a shrug. “These things happen, I learn, I grow. I took a chance, I came up weight” Diaz had been the heaviest opponent of his career. “It didn’t work out. It is what it is. I’ll face it like a man, like a champion, and come back and do it again.”

Fans hate it when athletes make excuses, but savvy fans know that these excuses can serve a purpose: a fighter who refuses to accept a loss might be gearing up to try to avenge it. Soon after the fight, McGregor posted a defiant treatise concluding with six-word promise: “Nate I will see you again.” Less than two weeks later, a leading M.M.A. site was reporting that a rematch was being arranged; in August, McGregor faced Diaz again, and beat him. He did what he had promised to do.

Ronda Rousey big loss was even more unexpected than McGregor’s, and even more consequential. During her first two and a half years in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, she won all six of her fights, most of them quickly each of the last three ended in less than a minute. In May, 2015, she appeared on the cover of sports illustrated accompanied by a definitive headline: “RONDA ROUSEY IS THE WORLD’S MOST DOMINANT ATHLETE.” But then, that November, she suffered perhaps the most spectacular upset in a professional fight since Buster Douglas astonished Mike Tyson. Rousey, in what was supposed to be an easy defense of her bantamweight U.F.C. title, was knocked flag of Holly Holm, who seemed nearly as surprised as her opponent.

Rousey spent the hours after the fight at a local hospital, and the months after that fight staging a high-visibility disappearing act. On , she made a noncommittal commitment: “I’m going to take a little bit of time, but I’ll be back.” She hosted “Saturday Night Live,” appeared again on the cover of Sports Illustrated (this time,theSwim Suit issue), and did some commercial work, including a rather incoherent ad for Reebok in which she purported to explain that she was “fine not being perfect.” She generally avoided M.M.A. reporters, although she gave a moving interview to Ellen DeGeneres, in which she said she contemplated suicide after the loss.