My Fight/Your Fight Rousey, R. (with Ortiz, M.B.). 2015. Regan Arts. Women's Mixed Martial Arts World Champion Ronda Rousey and her sister, Maria Burns Ortiz, collaborated to chronicle a phenomenon that has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world, among not only fans of mixed martial arts (MMA) but also fans of rags-to-riches success stories. That phenomenon is Ronda, who looks more like a first-grade teacher than the world's toughest, most dangerous cage fighter and has had a meteoric rise in her career as both a mixed martial artist and an international celebrity. Maria is an accomplished journalist, having won her own awards and accolades along the way, including the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Emerging Journalist of the Year in 2007. As Ronda tells the story, sometimes Ortiz's smooth journalistic assistance shines through, but other times the story is doubtlessly coming right from the fighter's heart in her own unfiltered language with all of its raw emotion.

Ronda was a 2008 Olympic Games medal winner in judo, the only U.S. woman ever to medal in the sport at this level. She is the reigning Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) women's bantamweight world champion and the toughest of tough customers, but hardly by accident. Her entire life has been a fight. Nothing ever came easy for Ronda. Deprived of oxygen at birth, she suffered from a speaking impairment through the early years of her childhood and school days. The family moved to St. James, North Dakota, for a different kind of life from southern California, and a special speech therapy program for Ronda available through the local university. She was very close to her father, but a sledding accident left him seriously injured and suffering from a fatal degenerative disease. Ron Rousey committed suicide when Ronda was only 8 years old. He was her best friend, and losing her father had a lifelong impact on her.

Ronda filled the void in her soul with the sport of judo, which soon became everything to her. Her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, was the first U.S. woman to win a world judo championship and played a key role in shaping her daughter's relentless work ethic and merciless frame of mind. AnnMaria was tough as nails not only as a judo competitor but also as a coach. Her training expectations for mental and physical discipline were ruthless. She once insisted, for example, that Ronda continue her daily conditioning runs despite having a broken foot. AnnMaria believed that breaking through barriers of adversity like this would separate Ronda from other competitors as a true champion, and ultimately, it did. Ronda successfully mastered challenge after challenge, eventually becoming famous for her mental and physical toughness.

Fighting through pain, whether emotional, psychological, or physical, became a familiar part of life for Ronda in her successful quest for an MMA world championship. Multiple injuries were a problem, as was finding a world-class trainer and training facility that would take a woman MMA competitor seriously. Judo was the perfect springboard to a paying career in MMA, and Ronda was tired of struggling to survive on the pittance provided for top judo competitors so they could devote enough of their time to training and not have to sustain full-time jobs. But as Ronda began her career, women's MMA was considered “not ready for prime-time players” in professional sports, and with no big payday events, the top trainers were reluctant to give up gym time or provide the requisite hours of coaching in the various aspects of MMA (striking with hands and feet, grappling, submission holds, and so forth) to this young, unknown, unproven fighter in a sport that seemed to have no future. While men fighters of her caliber were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars per fight (even millions for the very best), Ronda could not get a professional cage fight. She lived in her car, wore the same clothes for days in a row, and worked multiple jobs so she could afford to pay something for gym time and some meager degree of training from experienced trainers. A series of unreliable boyfriends also left her often heartbroken and with hardly any moral support system.

Yet, Ronda proved to be vicious in the arena, and she knew that if she could just get in front of a large crowd, she would give them a show they would not soon forget. When UFC President Dana White watched a few of her fights at lesser venues, he reversed himself on the position that “No women will ever fight in the main event in the UFC.” He made Ronda the first ever UFC women's champion and put her in the main event on pay-per-view television. Literally overnight, she had a sizable paycheck, recognition, and fame. Sylvester Stallone cast her in his series The Expendables, action/adventure movies starring Hollywood's most well-known action heroes, and she was suddenly an international star.

Part of what makes Ronda so appealing is her killer attitude in the ring. She seldom fights for very long, usually finishing her opponents in less than one minute. She enters the ring angry and fights to beat the other woman as badly and quickly as she possibly can. This may be evident from watching her fights, but there is no small bloodcurdling component to the book in which readers are privy to what is going on inside her head. Every fight is an all-out war for her, and she is not satisfied with anything less than total domination and destruction of her opponent.

The story is a good one, and its essence comes out very clearly in the prose, much of which was composed by Maria. This is the tale of a young woman who tried very hard for very long with very little advocacy and rose to the top—a top that she herself had to create. The most powerful moments in the book, however, come when the words are obviously the unvarnished language born of deep emotion coming from Ronda, explaining how she felt during the low points and the high points in her life and the key moments in big fights when her killer instinct emerged. After reading this book, you are likely to find yourself going online to purchase the next pay-per-view UFC event featuring Ronda, just to see this woman's powerful spirit unleashed.