UFC champion Ronda “Rowdy” Rousey is someone you either hate to love or love to hate. The first time I saw her in the ring was during winter break of 2013, in North Andover, MA, where my mother’s side of the family convenes each year for the holidays. My older (male) cousins had split the pay per view cost of live-streaming that night’s fights, and I watched disdainfully from an armchair as the announcers appeared on the screen, excitedly discussing what I had already decided was a primitive, brutal and needless sport. The most anticipated event of the night, made clear by my cousins’ animated dialogue, was the fight between Ronda Rousey and Miesha “Cupcake” Tate. The two had first gone head-to-head a year earlier, in a fight that left Rousey the new title-holder, and Tate with a broken arm. Tate, back to reclaim her title and her pride, was both the underdog and the crowd favorite. As someone who considers herself a kind, sympathetic person who takes no pleasure in the pain of others, I never expected to enjoy watching MMA (formerly titled “cage fighting”), let alone end up rooting for Rousey. Yet, from the moment she entered the stadium to Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” her expression so theatrically hostile I almost expected her to burst out laughing, I was intrigued.
The fight began and, although Tate held her own (she’s the only fighter to have lasted more than a single round against Rousey), Rousey’s athleticism and ferocious dedication clearly placed her in another league; 58 seconds into the third round, Tate found herself in a deadly armbar and tapped out. I was hooked; I watched YouTube videos of Rousey’s older fights, read articles about her, and (for the first time ever in my life) looked up stats on websites like espn.com. What I admire most about Rousey is her indestructible persistence. A former Olympic Judo champion, she is also largely responsible for the recent inclusion of women in the UFC, and learning about her victorious seizure of a new right for women is incredibly empowering.
Despite her history-making role in women’s athletics, Rousey tends to be a polarizing figure. In a New Yorker article entitled “Mean Girl” by Kelefa Sanneh, she is quoted saying “I’m the heel, I’m the antihero. And I like it that way” (The New Yorker). While she is a gifted athlete with unprecedented skill, she is also incredibly cocky, stubborn, and, occasionally, openly disrespectful; after defeating Tate for the second time, she refused to shake her hand. Her Instagram page is full of saucy quotes, such as, “Don’t confuse my personality with my attitude. My personality is who I am. My attitude depends on who you are.” While I am not ashamed of my infatuation with Rousey, I am aware that the cultural capital she holds clashes with the way I present myself to the world. Rousey proudly exhibits qualities that, in anyone else, I would condemn, but my admiration of both her athletic prowess and her brazen self-confidence make following her career an undeniable guilty pleasure.