Ronda Rousey Opens Up On Her Father Committing Suicide

It has been a great past weekend for former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey. She made her professional wrestling debut at WrestleMania 34 in New Orleans, teaming with Kurt Angle to defeat Triple H and Stephanie McMahon in a Mixed Tag Team match.

This comes after a dark period in Rousey’s life, in which she suffered the first back-to-back losses in her mixed martial arts (MMA) career. Rousey told The Ellen Degeneres Show that after her loss to Holly Holm at UFC 193 she struggled with depression and even contemplated suicide (via ESPN):

“Honestly, my thought in the medical room, I was sitting in the corner and was like, ‘What am I anymore if I’m not this?'” said Rousey. “Literally sitting there thinking about killing myself. In that exact second, I’m like, ‘I’m nothing. What do I do anymore? No one gives a s— about me anymore without this.'”

Rousey was recently on E!’s Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry, which airs tonight at 9 P.M. EDT on E!. During that appearance Rousey opened up about her own father’s suicide when she was young:

“My dad, he had broke his back, and he happened to have a really rare blood disorder that kept him from healing, similar to hemophilia and it doesn’t allow you to clot your blood,” said Rousey.

“And so, for years, he was getting platelet transfusions and trying to put rods in his back, everything. Eventually [the doctors] said you’re gonna be a paraplegic and then a quadriplegic and then you’re gonna die and there’s nothing we can do about it.

“And so, my dad decided to take matters into his own hands because he was in a huge amount of pain every day. He couldn’t work anymore, he felt like he was just a drag on the family and he was very much like a person who takes care of everyone. And he drove his car out and he put a hose in the exhaust. I was eight years old.

“I remember that what he passed, I would just try to tell myself that he was on a business trip and he’d be back. And that was my way to cope with it,” Rousey said. “But, I wouldn’t be crying unless he was awesome. He was the best.”

H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcribed quotes

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