Background and career
Ronda Jean Rousey ( ROW-zee; born February 1, 1987) is an American actress, retired professional wrestler, former judoka, and former 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. 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 Strikeforce was acquired by the UFC. Rousey was the first female fighter signed by the UFC and part of the promotion's first women's bout at UFC 157; she was also its inaugural Women's Bantamweight Champion, later becoming the first woman to appear in the UFC pound-for-pound rankings, and held the record for most UFC title defenses by a female (6) until it was 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, and headlined Evolution, which was WWE's first all-women's pay-per-view. There, Rousey 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.
Ronda Jean Rousey was born in Riverside, California, on February 1, 1987, the youngest of three daughters of AnnMaria De Mars (née Waddell) and Ronald John Rousey, after whom she was named. Her mother, a decorated judoka, was the first American to win a World Judo Championship (in 1984, as AnnMaria Burns). Her father worked for a manufacturing company, was a member of the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering, and prior to his death had been awarded a patent for a police protective shield. Rousey is of English, Polish, Venezuelan, Trinidadian, and Canadian ancestry. One of her maternal great-grandfathers, Alfred Waddell, was a Trinidadian doctor who immigrated to Canada and became one of the first black physicians in North America, while a maternal great-grandmother was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Her stepfather is an aerospace engineer. When Rousey was eight years old, her biological father, who had broken his back while sledding with his kids, died by suicide. AnnMaria pursued a PhD in educational psychology at the University of California, Riverside as her daughters grew up.
How Ronda Rousey makes money
She spent 1077 seconds in the octagon to attain all six and accumulated $1,080,000 in prize money; this equated to nearly $1002.79 for every second spent fighting.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth, in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
