Ronda Rousey Took Part In Neurological Study, Discovered Major Issues That Impacted Her Fighting Career

In an interview with the Untapped podcast (via Fightful), Ronda Rousey revealed that Dana White had her take part in a neurlogical study where she found out about the concussion issues that hurt her fighting career. She noted that during her fights, she lost vision, depth perception, the ability to track movements and make quick decisions. She later found out what was causing those problems.

Rousey retired from MMA following her last fight in 2016 against Amanda Nunes. She would then have a successful career as a professional wrestler, with a run in WWE that included a Royal Rumble win and three women’s championships. She left that company in 2023. Her last match also happened in 2023, a one-off tag match in Ring of Honor.

She said: “Fortunately, I have a lot more information now of what was going on with me and I just felt like I couldn’t be honest about what I was physically going through without people feeling like I was making excuses for myself and I also feel like I didn’t owe anyone any kind of explanation, especially if they were gonna sh*t all over it. So, yeah, I needed to figure out what was going on first and actually, recently, been able to — Dana (White) sent me to this long-term fighters neurological study, and (we’ve) actually made some — I don’t wanna call ‘em breakthroughs, but actually been able to diagnose a lot of the stuff that was going on with me and I guess still is and you know, I just didn’t have all the information at that time… I couldn’t hand that information to me then, you know? And to explain things better now… I don’t dwell on that at all. It was the best I could do with what I had… It is concussions but it’s also — we found out that it has a lot to do with migraines… Epilepsy runs in my family. My sister, my uncle, my great aunt. Every generation, someone is epileptic and there is relationship between epilepsy and migraines and I would get them when I was a kid. I would have an IMITREX Pen that I’d have to stab myself with, you know what I mean? If they started to come on… I would lose big chunks of my vision. They’re called auras, and I would lose the ability to read and I would get these searing headaches… But they kind of stopped when I was younger.

But I was talking about my concussion history with — it was Dr. (Charles) Bernick, I think, at the Cleveland Clinic and he was saying that 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 and he was saying that not all migraines involve the searing headache. The headache part isn’t part of all of it and so what we think was going on was we kind of ended up in this feedback loop of the more concussions I was getting, the easier it was to set off these migraines and so in these fights… what figures is two of my triggers are bright lights and head impacts. So I’d get hit and I’d basically 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 and I thought that, oh, I have a concussion. I’m out on my feet but I wouldn’t be stumbling around. I didn’t lose my balance and this is like, I had to retire, because this kept happening to me more and more often and to the point where I would get a jab and I would basically go blind and he said that’s what he thinks is happening is these impacts, now because of all of the concussions, are setting off these migraine events, which is I guess my neurons get overly excited and then they shut down… It could be a game-changer because it actually could be some solutions to it. Before, I was like, oh, it was just inevitably decline and I inevitably decline and until I am sh*tting my pants. Great, you know? This is my life now and I was like, I need to stop this or else I’m just speeding this up and so, now because of all this information, I’m gonna go and start seeing these migraine specialists and all these different neurologists that actually could possibly help me address this and these are the kind of things I felt like if I brought it up, people would think I’m just making excuses for myself and now that I’m kind of getting some help and diagnosis and stuff like that, I don’t know… I’m much more hopeful than I’ve ever been and instead of just being like, well, okay, well, this is just part of it and I just gotta walk away before it gets worse, possibly, there’s something I could do to make it better and so, yeah, I just didn’t have this information back then so, I didn’t know what to say other than there’s something going on with me and I can’t fight anymore because of it.“