The NY Post Maureen Callahan grabbed an excerpt, and it is fascinating.
Rousey was born in Riverside County, Calif., with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. She was blue. Doctors revived her, but those crucial moments without oxygen led to developmental delays. She didn’t begin talking until she was 4 years old.
“At about 6, I began speaking coherently in sentences,” Rousey says. “They told me I had brain damage from the hypoxia. But when you’re a kid, your brain figures out a way to reorganize.”
Her beloved dad and namesake, Ron, encouraged her. “You’re a smart kid,” he’d say. “It’s not like you’re some f- -kin’ moron.”
Ron took her shopping for her first doll — a Hulk Hogan Wrestling Buddy, which she slept with every night. He took her hiking in the woods. At the end of each day, they’d sit together and watch the animal documentary series “Wild Discovery.”
When Rousey was 8, her father killed himself, committing suicide by asphyxia. He had suffered chronic, acute back pain since a freak accident a few years before, but no one saw it coming.
“None of us were the same after that,” Rousey says. Her father’s death was the most formative event of her life, and she almost never talks about it.
RR's mom? One tough broad...
Here, from the book, is a typical interaction while training:
“I hurt my toe,” I said. “I think it’s broken.”
“It’s a toe,” she said dismissively.
“But it hurts,” I said, crying. “Do you have a pillow for me?”
“What the f- -k do you mean a pillow?” she asked. “Go run laps.”
I hobbled away, more hopping than running.
“I said ‘run laps,’ not ‘hop laps,’ ” my mom said. “Run.”
Rousey was only 12, and to this day, she is thankful to her mother for such militaristic discipline. “Running around on a broken toe — was I going to hurt myself worse?” she asks. “I learned that if my toe broke, I could run on it anyway.”
Today - they call DYFS...
Here's more at the NY Post.
Follow us on Twitter for exclusive stories, Subscribe by Email, or Return home for Top sports news.
Tweet