Ronda Rousey Quotes

When women say that going on publications directed at men is somehow demeaning, I don't think that's true. I think that's one really effective way to change the societal standard women are held to.

The thing that gets me up in the morning is that I'm really not ready to see someone that I know I can beat holding my belt.

My locker room is serious. It is quiet. No one smiles. I don't like people telling jokes in my locker room. Now is not a time to tell jokes. From the minute we leave my hotel room, do not fuck around. The time for fucking around is over. Some serious shit is about to happen.

Know when to explode and know when to relax

I'm really encouraged by the progress I've seen with what they're doing with the women in WWE, but I feel like there's a lot more than can be done.

Where is women's sports prominently displayed with the men? Tennis is the only thing I can think of.

I try not to get caught up on how cool I am. That way nothing ever gets done. I'm always thinking about what I haven't done.

In the moments that you fall hardest - when you lose a job, or find out a boyfriend is cheating on you, or realize that you made a bad financial decision - you can channel your shame, your anger, your desire, your loss. You can learn, take chances, change course. You can choose to become so successful that no one can ever put you in a situation like that again.

I thought that I was mutant somehow. I eventually realized that I have a very natural look, and that's what God gave me, and I'm proud of it. It was kind of a way for me to get past that as well.

No one is ever going to give you anything of value. You have to work for it, sweat for it, fight for it. But there is far greater value in accomplishments you earn than in accolades that are merely given to you. When you earn something, you never have to worry about justifying that you truly deserve it.

The Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I was lucky enough to go twice, but most people only get one chance. And in judo you can train your whole life and it'll come down to a split second: You can lose everything or win anything.

I was always pushed to do that much more, and in the long run that made me more of an MMA fighter. My mom always told me that if I let it go to the judges, I'd lost. There was no way I was going to win a decision, so I had to find ways to finish the fight fast.

There are so many ridiculous arguments that MMA is somehow anti-woman.

I fight with pizazz. It's a different sound from everyone else. It's the sound of pizazz.

I'm the champion for a reason.

I might not have had the tools at my disposal that my opponents had, but I created advantages of my own.

My father would say, 'Ronnie, you're going to be someone special. Whatever it is that you want to do, you're going to be the best in the world at it.'

Every chick I try to intimidate in a different way. You have to think about their personality. You have to think about what would get under that particular person's skin the most.

Ronda, you know why a guy in his twenties goes after sixteen-year-old girls? Because they're dumb enough to believe his bullshit.

One of the greatest days of my life was when I came to understand that other people's approval and my happiness were not related.

The style I have in judo is very unique ... One big advantage a judo player has is they have very good posture and - like, wrestlers, they show when they're about to do a take-down ... which judo players don't, and so I kind of incorporate the boxing style with a judo grip and finishing that way.

If you're unwilling to leave someplace you've outgrown, you will never reach your full potential. To be the best, you have to constantly be challenging yourself, raising the bar, pushing the limits of what you can do. Don't stand still, leap forward.

It's your purpose to leave the world better than how you found it.

I lost my second judo tournament. I finished second, losing to a girl named Anastasia. Afterward, her coach congratulated me.

"You did a great job. Don't feel bad, Anastasia is a junior national champion."

I felt consoled for about a second, until I noticed the look of disgust on Mom's face. I nodded at the coach and walked away.

Once we were out of earshot she lit into me. "I hope you know better than to believe what he said. You could have won that match. You had every chance to beat that girl. The fact that she is a junior national champion doesn't mean anything. That's why they have tournaments, so you can see who is better. They don't award medals based on what you won before. If you did your absolute best, if you were capable of doing nothing more, then that's enough. Then you can be content with the outcome. But if you could have done better, if you could have done more, then you should be disappointed. You should be upset you didn't win. You should go home and think about what you could have done differently and then next time do it differently. Don't you ever let anyone tell you that not doing your absolute best is good enough. You are a skinny blonde girl who lives by the beach, and unless you absolutely force them to, no one is ever going to expect anything from you in this sport. You prove them wrong.

There have always been people who have written me off. They're not going away. I use that to motivate me. I'm driven to show them just how wrong they are.

At 150 pounds, I feel like I'm at my healthiest and my strongest and my most beautiful.

I'm unbelievably ticklish. When I was a little kid, my sisters would hold me down and tickle me until I peed my pants.

Judo taught me that I am capable of anything ... I can mentally push past anything and be victorious.

Every naked chick in the room ran toward the scale. It was just titties and passports everywhere.

I wasn't allowed to throw big hooks and overhand rights until I'd been striking for three years. It's so you don't rely on those things from the very beginning. If your footwork sucks, and you can only stand in one place and throw your hands all crazy while the other person is running around, you're never going to be able to hit them.

Do not accept less than what you are capable of. Never expect more than you are capable of, but never accept less either.

The best way to take a punch is to look at it. Honestly. Someone could hit you with the hardest punch that they have, but as long as you see it, it's not going to knock you out. It's the punches that you don't see that knock you out. So you could get tapped with a small punch, but if you don't see it, you're out.

Athletes who dope don't believe in themselves.

Strong and healthy is the new sexy.

Most people get scared away from having an opinion. It's not so much my opinions everybody relates to, it's that I don't care about being punished for it.

When you're doing something like body paint or a nude shoot, you're making yourself very vulnerable, and you're really trusting people to really take care of you and make sure everything is very professional.

I was just a little three-year-old kid, and I loved Hulk Hogan. And when you're a three-year-old kid, you don't list off the reasons. I was just drawn to him. He was always my favorite, even in the video games and everything like that. He was the one that I always remembered and liked the most.

I'm a huge fan of wrestling, and I would like to see the position of women in the sport continue to improve, so if I can be a part of it, great.

The confusing thing is we now live in a society where it's not illegal to be an asshole, but it's illegal to slap one.

I train to be the best in the world on my worst day

I don't shy away from any questions. I'm not scared of any question. I'll give you an answer. A lot of people are scared of having actual opinions out there. People are so scared of criticism ... I'm not scared of people disliking me.

I'm scared of failure all the time. But not scared enough to stop trying.

People say to me all the time, 'You have no fear.' I tell them, 'No, that's not true. I'm scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I'm a courageous person because I'm a scared person.'

This past Halloween girls across the country dressed up as Ronda Rousey. That's because she's an amazing, beautiful, and powerful woman.

After thirteen years, the American flag that had been placed on Dad's coffin at his funeral had been unfurled and was fluttering in the arms of my mother. My dad had always believed

I knew I would make something of myself. I just had to decide what that was going to be.

When it comes to fighting, physical strength really has very little to do with it. One of the tenets that judo is founded upon is "Maximum efficiency, minimum effort." That has really defined my career. It is the foundation of all the techniques and everything I do. It's one reason why I don't get tired. It's one reason why I am able to fight girls who are a head taller than me, or chicks who are on steroids. People who cheat or dope lack the one thing every true champion must have: belief. No drug or amount of money or favoritism can ever give you belief in yourself.

Buffalo wings and cider is all I need.

Sports are a metaphor for life.

No one is easy until you actually beat them.

That Olympic loss still eats at me. It will follow me forever. But, I'm not ashamed of how I lost. I don't wonder about what I could have done differently. I have no regrets about the match. I had to do a haymaker at the end. I made the right decision. It's just sometimes even the right decisions don't work out.

Somehow, people act like I have no competition, but the thing is, the competition is so good that it forces me to be better than I even thought was possible.

I think that Floyd Mayweather is the best boxer that's ever lived; like actual technical boxer.

When you shoot nude, you always find a way to, like, cover yourself up in a way. So you really don't feel like you're truly naked because you're still covering yourself.

I think that going on any reality show is not good for your mental health because you behave differently when you are being watched, and you constantly have an extra bit of awareness of what's going on all the time.

I got a lot of body paint on me in a short period of time. I would definitely do it again because Joann [Gair] is so brilliant, but I would definitely need, like, a good long break for it.

I did what sports were supposed to be like, and I was living in my car. So you know what, fine. I'm gonna talk a bunch of sh*t. I'm gonna pose in a couple of pictures. And I'm gonna break a couple of girl's arms, and I'm not gonna feel the least bit sorry about it because you know what? At least I can feed my dog.

My first injury ever was a broken toe, and my mother made me run laps around the mat for the rest of the night. She said she wanted me to know that even if I was hurt, I was still fine.

I might make an investment and lose some money, but that's something I can recover from.

Fighting is not a man's thing, it is a human thing.

It took a lot of time to develop a healthier relationship with food and with my weight.

I'm going to be super successful one day, and I'm going to write a book. It's going to be a kickass autobiography. And this is how it always happens in the book. This is just that part of the book where the character is going through hard times. This is that sucky part of the story. Just get through a few more pages, and it's going to have an amazing ending.

Most people focus on the wrong thing; They focus on the result, not the process. The process is the sacrifice; it's all the hard parts - the sweat, the pain, the tears, the losses. You make the sacrifices anyway. You learn to enjoy them, or at least embrace them. In the end, it is the sacrifices that must fulfill you.

Champions do more than people who think that they've done more.

See, for some reason, I feel like it's a victory if I wake up one minute before the alarm. It's like I'm in a contest with myself, with my foot kicking around until it wakes up the rest of my body. It's the stupidest thing. But it makes me feel like I've already won something.

Do I ever get tired of being the first female everything? Not really, I just happened to be in a position where the job that I wanted was not really there for me. I had to create an opportunity instead of waiting for an opportunity.

I'm the champion because I'm the best in every area.

That I happened to fall into a career that no other girls wanted isn't surprising to me. I wanted something that didn't exist, so I had to create it.

If you work hard the fight's easy. If you don't work hard then the fight's hard.

After I defended my title the first time when I beat Sarah Kaufman, I went back to my room, and my friend ordered all these trays of hot wings. They came into the room, and the little hotel sheet thing was draped over it, and I go to open it up, and it's breaded and boneless. I cried.

A lot of people, once they become champion, they relax, kind of sit in the position and try to enjoy it. But I feel like everything I've ever worked for could be lost at any moment. I work harder and harder and harder, because I want to be farther ahead with every fight, and not worrying about these girls catching up to me.

No one has the right to beat you.

Even if they don't know it, everyone has the instinct to survive.

A lot of my best clothes I buy at photo shoots because I don't have time to shop.

The kind of hope I'm talking about is the belief that something good will come. That everything you're going through and everything you've gone through will be worth the struggles and frustrations. The kind of hope I'm talking about is a deep belief that the world can be changed, that the impossible is possible.

We were in the middle of a sandbar in the middle of the ocean with no one around, and still someone was following me from New York, and was hiding in some bushes like a mile away with a long lens, so he still got pictures. It was really an eye opener to how you really have to be careful about being followed everywhere. I was trying to go to the most remote place in the world, I was out on a sandbar in the middle of the ocean, and they still found me. It was definitely a very new experience.

I grew up as an athlete doing judo, so I didn't really have a conventional, feminine body type.

The bigger my chest is, the more it gets in the way. It just creates space. It makes me much more efficient if I don't have so much in the way between me and my opponent.

I have to be out there to sell these fights; it's not because I really enjoy getting made up and going to work every day. It's cool, it's an awesome job, but it's still a job. I'm doing it because it helps me make a living and not because I'm so extremely vain that I want to see my face everywhere.

Don't be a Do Nothing Bitch

Mine's going to be the best book tour that ever happened!

When people say, "Oh you're so cocky. You're so arrogant," I feel like they're telling me that I think too highly of myself. My question for them is: "Who are you to tell me that I need to think less of myself?

Look at my face. Does it look like I can take a good hit?

I'm a big crier. I never cry when something is painful, but I cry if things are frustrating. Like if I'm trying to do something, and I mess up over and over. If I'm playing a video game, and I can't beat a level that I've tried 10 times, I'll cry. When I was a kid, I think I cried for every practice from 2003 to the middle of 2006.

If you can't dream big, ridiculous dreams, what's the point in dreaming at all?

At home, I watch fights and documentaries - that's it. If it's not about the birth and death of stars, 'Frozen Planet,' or someone getting punched in the face, I'm probably not watching it.

A sleeper just waits and when the time is right, they come out and wow everyone. That's you, kiddo. Don't you worry.

That's the thing I'm worst at: resting. I have to be forced to do it. Sometimes I think of loopholes. 'Oh, I'm just going for a walk, up a dune that's 45 degrees, but I'm walking, so it's not a workout.'

Acting with fear is called courage.

If there's a camera on me or off me, it's roughly the same, just a lot less energy.

I love Canadians. They are the coolest, nicest, most patriotic people, and they will support their countrymen no matter what, and I think that's commendable.

At the end of the day, I can't curl up with people's opinions.

I make fractals. They're like mathematical pictures. My stepdad is actually a rocket scientist, so in his free time, he gave me a fractal program for fun. He showed me how to use it when I was about nine or 10, and I made thousands of fractals.

Reality TV is set up to make people entertaining. A good person with values and principles is not good television.

I will never be OK with losing, but losing in the wrong way, losing with regret, can take your pride away. I've never chosen to lose that way.

When you and everyone around you are immersed in one small community, it is easy to mistake it for the whole world. But once you break away, you realize that no one outside your tiny circle gives a shit about the stupid stuff that was at the center of your little world. When you understand that, you discover there is a much bigger, better world out there.

Everything in the world is information. The information you choose to acknowledge and the information you choose to ignore is up to you. You can let outside factors beyond your control throw off your focus. You can let aching muscles hold you back. You can let silence make you feel uncomfortable. By choosing to focus only on the information that is necessary, you can tune out every distraction, and achieve far more.

Being an athlete, you try to get protein.

One thing that I learned from judo ... Maximum efficiency and minimum effort.

I like to be part of the change I want to see in the world. Not being afraid of criticism is actually a big advantage.