Ronda Rousey Says This Infamous WWE Moment Gave Her a Concussion

Olympic medalist and champion fighter Ronda Rousey joined WWE in 2018, marking a major step in her career after first finding success as a mixed martial arts fighter. When Rousey made her debut at Elimination Chamber that year, WWE promoter and retired wrestler Stephanie McMahon, daughter of WWE founder Vince McMahon, wanted to give the MMA star a warm welcome to the ring.

Rousey proceeded to slam former WWE star Triple H through a table onto the ground. Seconds later, Stephanie McMahon came up behind her while she stood over Triple H, turned Rousey around, and slapped her upside the head. The crowd naturally reacted in shock.

In a new interview with Cageside Seats, Rousey explained that the incident caused her some serious head trauma. "It gave me a concussion," she said of McMahon's slap.

A concussion is no laughing matter, and Rousey learned early on that she was prone to the potentially dangerous head injury. "I had a very rich concussion history before I even started in MMA. For my entire judo career, which was like 10 years, I actually was experiencing concussion symptoms more often than not for an entire decade," she said.

"Every single time you get one concussion, it’s easier to get the next one. And so I’d been compounding concussion after concussion after concussion for so many years that when I got into MMA, if I got any kind of significant strike, I would be seeing stars, which is not normal," she continued.

Related: Study Finds Concerning Effects of Concussions Later in Life

At the time, there wasn't as much education and care around injuries such as concussions. "It was just that era where if you bonked your head or something like that and you told your coach, 'I have photo vision. I have spots in my vision. I’m nauseous. I have a headache,' they just told you to stop being a p---y, suck it up, and go back on the mat," she stated plainly.

Still, she felt she had to keep quiet about what she was going through.

"It got to the point where if I was getting touched at all, if I was getting jabbed, I was starting to get concussion symptoms and I couldn’t tell my coach about it. I couldn’t tell [UFC president] Dana [White] about it, because they would retire me. They wouldn’t let me fight. And I wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to admit that I couldn’t do everything perfectly," she said. "I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want them to say, 'Oh, you can’t do this match that you’ve been preparing for. You can’t do this, can’t do that.' And I had a lifetime of experience hiding concussions. And so now that I’ve basically putting all of that behind me, I can finally be open about these things."

Stephanie McMahon's 2018 slap wasn't the only injury in the WWE that gave Rousey a concussion. She faced off against wrestler Nikki Bella at the Evolution event that same year, but Bella had already laid hands on Rousey before they even got in the ring. "Nikki Bella gave me an open-hand slap [in the days leading up to the match] and I was seeing stars and I had a headache for the rest of the day," she recalled.

Rousey left WWE in October 2023 and has since been wrestling on the independent circuit. Her new memoir Our Fight, which chronicles her life and career in the spotlight, is out April 2.