Giving Up the Fight

Ronda Rousey has spent much of her life doing what people told her couldn’t be done. She was the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in judo and was instrumental in establishing women’s MMA as a major draw, becoming a global superstar in the process. Yet, this week’s What Could Go Right? episode was much less about those accomplishments than about what happened once she’d accomplished them.

One thing that happened is her upcoming graphic novel, Expecting the Unexpected, which grew out of Ronda’s own experience with pregnancy and motherhood. Its premise — a pregnant assassin fights her way through a hostile world — allowed her to explore the contradiction in someone programmed to both destroy and create. (Writing, she told me, has since become quite an outlet for her; a sequel and multiple screenplays are on the way.)

We did, of course, talk about combat sports — specifically, the societal polarization that increasingly fuels it. For the recent fightcard she staged independently, Ronda deliberately rejected that culture-war framing, leaning instead into a “fighters versus the machine” storyline. She said the crowd seemed relieved to see competitors working together rather than trying to rile each other up for a change.

We’d all do well to take note. What I found most striking, though, was her reflections on ambition. Not too long ago, realizing that winning didn’t hold the same power it once did for her, she decided she was done chasing. She is still wildly ambitious, but not to fill some void.

Hers is a too rare if admirable understanding of one crucial aspect of success: knowing when you have enough.

Here are some of the more intriguing bits of our conversation. You can listen to the podcast in its entirety here.

“I was just continuing to chase even though I’d already caught it.”

“I think a lot of people are tired of being angry.”

“John Wick never goes to the bathroom. You ever notice that?