Ronda Rousey has opened up like never before about the medical reasons behind her departure from the UFC, revealing she was suffering from a history of concussions that triggered debilitating migraine events, causing her to lose her vision during fights. Speaking on the “UNTAPPED” podcast, the UFC Hall of Famer detailed the terrifying symptoms that forced her to walk away from competition.
Rousey explained that she recently participated in a long-term neurological study for fighters, which finally helped diagnose the issues that plagued the end of her MMA career. “We found out that it has a lot to do with migraines. So I have epilepsy runs in my family… and there is a relationship between epilepsy and migraines,” she said.
The problem, she learned, was a “feedback loop” between her concussion history and her predisposition to migraines. “People that get migraines are actually more susceptible to concussions, and the more concussions that you get, the easier it is for these impacts to set off a migraine,” she stated. “So what we think was going on was… in these fights, I would get hit, and I basically, like, lose big chunks of my vision and my depth perception and my ability to track movements quickly and make snap decisions, which is basically all the things that I need.”
She described how even light impacts would trigger these episodes. “It was like, progressively getting worse, like, to the point where, you know, sparring sessions, anything like that, like, I would have to, like, shut myself into a dark room afterward… it was like, lighter and lighter hits were causing it to the point where, like, if I was getting jabbed at all I was basically, like, losing my vision.”
Rousey admitted she felt she couldn’t speak about it at the time because she didn’t want to sound like she was making excuses, and she didn’t have the full medical explanation she has now. “That’s how I had to approach it,” she said of her final fights. “I had to win perfectly with no error… that was literally, like the margin of error that I was dealing with.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit UNTAPPED with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
