Biography
Ronda Jean Rousey (/ˈraʊzi/ ROW-zee; born February 1, 1987) is an American professional wrestler, actress, and former judoka and mixed martial artist. She is best known for her tenures in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and WWE.
She was the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in judo by winning bronze at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Lynn Roethke had previously won a silver medal in the 1988 Olympics. However, her medal was not counted toward the US medal count because Women's Judo was a demonstration sport. Rousey began her mixed martial arts (MMA) career with King of the Cage in 2011. She soon joined Strikeforce, becoming their last Women's Bantamweight Champion, holding the championship until the UFC acquired Strikeforce. Rousey was part of the UFC's first female fight at UFC 157, was their inaugural Women's Bantamweight Champion, and held the record for most UFC title defences (6) by a female until being surpassed by Valentina Shevchenko in 2022. Rousey retired from MMA in 2016 and was the first female fighter inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2018.
Rousey began a career in professional wrestling in 2018, signing with WWE, and debuted at WrestleMania 34. She won the Raw Women's Championship at that year's SummerSlam. She headlined WWE's first and only all women's pay-per-view Evolution, in which she defended the title. Rousey lost the title in the first women's WrestleMania main event at WrestleMania 35. Rousey returned at the 2022 Royal Rumble, winning the women's Royal Rumble match. That year, she would win the SmackDown Women's Championship twice, making her an overall three-time women's world champion in WWE. She became the eighth Women's Triple Crown Champion when she won the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship with Shayna Baszler. Rousey and Baszler also unified the WWE and NXT Women's Tag Team Championships. After leaving WWE in October 2023, she began wrestling on the independent circuit.
Rousey is the only woman to become a champion in both the UFC and WWE, as well as the only woman to headline a pay-per-view event in both companies. She was voted the best female athlete of all time in a 2015 ESPN fan poll, and Fox Sports described her as "one of the defining athletes of the 21st century." Rousey has also appeared in films, including The Expendables 3 (2014), Furious 7 (2015), and Mile 22 (2018), and published her autobiography, My Fight / Your Fight, in 2015.
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