My Fight / Your Fight (8 page)

During the session on banned substances, a representative from the US Olympic Committee spent several hours educating us on the lengthy list of substances considered performance enhancers. The woman handed us a ten-page document containing dozens of words I had never seen before. Lots of -ines, -ides, -oids, -ates, and -anes. In fact, some of the items weren't even words. They were chemical compounds. (I was still taking high school biology. I hadn't gotten to chemistry yet.)

“It is not just about avoiding steroids,” the woman said. “It is your responsibility as an athlete to be fully accountable for any substance you put in your body. This applies to vitamins, supplements, creams, shots, prescriptions. If you are not absolutely certain about what you might be taking, you need to find out. ‘I didn't know' is not an acceptable defense in the case of a failed drug test.”

I raised my hand. All of the eyeballs in the room were on me. The woman gave me a nod.

“What about Flintstones vitamins?” I asked.

She laughed. The room laughed. Two of the women who were my national “teammates” rolled their eyes at me. Then the anti-doping lady continued on with her speech.

I raised my hand again. Again, the head nod.

“No, I'm serious,” I said. “I take those. Are those OK?”

The woman, caught off guard, paused. “Yes,” she said. “There are no steroids in Flintstones vitamins.”

I had a follow-up.

“Anything besides steroids that might be in them that you're not allowed to have?” I asked.

One of the women who had rolled their eyes sighed loudly. I was already performing better than all of them in competition, and this conversation was a reminder that I was considerably younger than them as well.

The woman giving the lecture didn't even pause to think about my question.

“Nope, I feel very confident telling you that there are no banned substances in Flintstones vitamins,” she said.

Flintstones chewable vitamins with iron is the closest I have ever come to taking an unknown substance.

Doping is one of the most selfish things you can do in sports, but the reality is that performance-enhancing drugs are very much a part of the combat sports world. In judo, doping ruins the sport by stealing success from athletes who are competing with honor. In MMA, doping is almost negligent homicide. The premise of MMA is to get into an enclosed cage with another person and try to beat them into submission or unconsciousness. A person who is taking a substance that makes him or her stronger than normal could really kill someone.

Athletes who dope don't believe in themselves.

I train to beat anyone. I hold myself to the standard that I need to be good enough to beat people whether or not they're doping. I would never publicly name an opponent who hasn't tested positive, but there are opponents who I definitely knew were doping. There are opponents whom I have strongly suspected of doping. There are opponents who have later been popped for doping. Just looking at the prevalence of doping in sports, fighting someone using performance-enhancing drugs is inevitable. It pisses me off. But I have beaten those girls all the same.

The one thing they couldn't inject into their asses is belief.

Taking the next step isn't always easy. People stay in jobs they've outgrown because they're afraid of having to prove themselves anew. People stay in unhappy relationships because they're afraid of being alone. Athletes stick with a coach who can't help them develop further because they are afraid of being tested, of not measuring up to someone else's standards, because they're afraid to upset someone they care about. They let fear hold them back.

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.

The first time I met Jim Pedro, aka Big Jim, was at the 2003 senior nationals. I was less than a month out from having my ACL repaired and still on crutches. I couldn't compete, but the tournament was in Las Vegas, a four-hour drive from L.A. We already had a room reservation, and at the very least, I could scope out the women I would be competing against when I returned from my injury.

But, as I sat on a metal folding chair at the Riviera Hotel, attending the tournament seemed like the worst idea ever. My mom had hoped I would be motivated to get back. But watching girls I knew I could beat battle it out for what should have been my medal was unbearable.

Tears of anger welled up in my eyes.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” a gravelly voice asked me.

I looked up. The man standing next to me looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a guy you'd meet at the Jersey shore. He had curly white hair and a bushy mustache. He was wearing a polo shirt, and a large tuft of chest hair was visible at the neck.

“I'm supposed to be out there,” I said between sniffles. “I could have won.”

He looked down at my leg extended in the large black brace.

“Kinda hard to compete with that thing on ya leg.” He had a thick New England accent.

I nodded. Then I told him how this was supposed to be my year, how this tournament was supposed to have been my senior-level debut, and how my entire plan had been derailed. Tears were running down my face by the time I finished.

“Well, the way I see it, you have two choices,” the guy said. “You can sit here and cry about it. That's one. But if I was you, I'd go to the gym and train and get stronger than a couple of ox. Make it even easier to beat all these girls when you come back. Then when you get better, you can come train with me.”

I straightened up a bit in my chair. He was right.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Ronda Rousey,” I said.

He stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet ya, Ronda. I'm Jim Pedro, but you can just call me Big Jim.”

Everyone in judo had heard of his son—Jimmy Pedro, aka Little Jimmy—who had won the world championships in 1999. Big Jim was his coach.

When I returned from Vegas, I was more driven than ever to get back on the mat. I was going to come back stronger than anyone expected. In my US Open debut, I shocked pretty much everyone except for my mom and myself. I always knew I was going to be the top American athlete in my division. It was simply a matter of time. Now, my time had come.

Trace Nishiyama, who I'd been training with since I was eleven, is an amazing coach. He was never possessive. Most judo clubs only have practice twice a week. But I needed—and wanted—to practice more, so my mom mapped out what clubs were good and who had practice what nights. Then the two of us would hop in the car, often just as rush hour was beginning, and move through traffic at a crawl so I could train daily. We spent the weekday evenings crisscrossing the L.A. area to practice at various dojos and weekends at tournaments.

My mom and I spent upwards of thirty hours a week in the car on the way to and from practice. Our conversations often centered on judo, but ranged from insights she saw in watching me train to mental strategy. My favorite stories, however, were the ones from when she was competing, many of which involved much younger and more colorful versions of the coaches I knew.

Where some coaches feel threatened seeing their athletes train at other clubs, Trace didn't mind. Trace knew how to do a killer drop shoulder throw and he taught me how to do one, but he also knew there were coaches who knew how to do other moves better than him. He encouraged me to learn from them as well. And I did. But, by the time I was fifteen, it was clear that I needed more than Trace or any other coach in L.A. had to offer. This was a moment my mom had been preparing me for since I began showing an extraordinary combination of promise and drive as a thirteen-year-old kid.

“At some point, you'll have to move on,” my mom told me. “That's a mistake people make. They get comfortable and stay at the same place a long time. But after a while, people run out of what they can teach you. Eventually, you'll know ninety percent of what a coach can teach you. When that happens, you're best served going somewhere else. The new coach might not be any better than the one you have, but will be able to teach you something you don't already know. That's what it takes to improve. You've always got to be looking ahead to that next step.”

By the time I was sixteen, I was ready to take that next step.

Just after Thanksgiving in 2003, I walked into the community center where the club was located. As always, the place smelled of delicious Japanese food, coming from the cooking classes happening in one of the rooms adjacent to the gym. I had arrived a little early and the room was still largely empty.

Trace was setting up the mats. He looked up, surprised to see me. I was never early.

“Hey, Ronda,” he said.

I smiled, weakly. “Hey, Trace.”

“What's up?” he asked. “Everything OK?”

I helped him position the blue crash pads.

My voice choked up, and it all came pouring out. I explained to him that, since the US Open, the whole trajectory of my life felt as if it had accelerated. Things were moving so much faster than I had expected. I told him it had been an honor to be a part of his club for so many years and that I wouldn't be where I was without him, but that I had reached a point where I needed more. I told him I was going out to Boston in a couple of weeks and that I might end up training at the Pedros' club. I told Trace I didn't want him to be upset with me for leaving. By the end of the conversation, I was crying.

Trace wrapped an arm around me. “You got to go to grow, kid.”

I felt like a weight had been lifted, like I was a little dove whose cage had been opened to be set free.

I will always love and appreciate Trace, not just for what he taught me, but also for recognizing when the day came that he couldn't teach me any more.

The practice that followed was an emotional one. As I helped put up the mats, I looked around the room at my coaches, my teammates, their parents, their siblings. I was struck by the realization that soon I would walk out of the club doors for the final time and probably never see many of them ever again. I started to cry. The fact that no one asked me why I was crying made it even worse, not because I wanted someone to ask, but because it showed that these people really knew me. I cried all the time—when I got thrown, when I got frustrated at practice, when I opened my judo bag and realized I'd forgotten my belt, when I got cut in front of while in line for the water fountain. Now I was off to a new place where they wouldn't know that I cried all the time and would ask me why I was crying. I would feel pressured to stop crying, which only makes me cry more.

On the way out to the car, I paused in front of our club trophy case. Several of my medals and trophies were on display. I looked at the Player of the Year trophy awarded to the top athlete from the club. I had won it four years straight. Suddenly, the idea that I would never win it again seemed overwhelming. Everything was going to change. While I knew it was the right decision, while I had my coach's blessing, while it was the inevitable next step I had been preparing for, it was still hard.

The next morning, my mom showed me an email that Trace had written to the Pedros. He told them he was entrusting me to their care, that I had tremendous potential, and that they should let him know if I ever needed anything.

That's a person who actually cares about you.

My mom knew about what it took to become a world-class athlete; she knew I needed a new coach who could take me to the next level as an elite international competitor; and she knew that meant I had to leave home, but she left the choice up to me.

“There isn't a best coach, there's a best coach for you,” my mom told me. “You're not picking your coach to suit your mom or your friends or the people who run USA Judo, you need to pick the coach who is going to be the best person to coach you.” (USA Judo is the sport's national governing body.)

She had started sending me to the top clubs around the country for camps and clinics when I was thirteen, so I could check clubs and coaches out with an eye toward the future.

I ended up with new friends around the country, but none of the clubs I had visited had felt right. I didn't get that inexplicable, you-know-it-when-you-feel-it feeling.

In January 2004, I boarded a plane to Boston.

Beyond our brief meeting at the senior nationals, I didn't know much about Big Jim. He was known for his expertise when it came to groundwork. In addition to coaching Little Jimmy to a world championship, he had trained half a dozen Olympians and close to one hundred junior and senior national champions. Moreover, my mom approved of him, and my mom's seal of approval is harder to earn than a Nobel Prize.

Big Jim is tough. He might be as hairy as a teddy bear, but that's where any comparisons between him and something cuddly end. He has a booming voice and a furious intensity. He will tell you in no uncertain terms when he thinks you're doing a shit job. He openly admitted to having slapped a referee. His personality made him a polarizing figure within judo, but no one ever questioned his knowledge and ability as a coach.