She Beat Ronda, Now Holly Holm Has to Take on Fame

If I gave you two options for how to spend your day tomorrow, would you choose walking into an Octagon to fight the most dominant mixed martial artist in history for 25 minutes or would you choose sitting for an interview on the morning talk show Live! With Kelly and Michael for five? Would you risk life and limb fighting a Olympic-level judoka, or would you rather risk your soul teaching a woman who had just introduced you as the WFC champion of the world to a studio full of indifferent housewives how to throw a kick on national television? How about telling the exact same story over and over again to Larry King and then Seth Meyers and then every sports roundtable show and every local morning news team in the country? How would you feel if I told you that your reward for winning the biggest fight of your life would be having to sit through an interview with blowhard Colin Cowherd and then having to get close enough to him to demonstrate your elbow technique? What if I told you that Albuquerque news station KRQE wants to hear all about your embarrassing run-in with Jay-Z and Beyoncé last weekend? Would you continue blithely running around the world to satisfy the morbid, fleeting curiosity of every middling TV producer in the country or would you pray for the moment when you could go back to the relative safety of the Octagon to risk your arm against Ronda Rousey or your face against Cristine "Cyborg" or any other part of your body against any fighter, anyone who isn't a professional "personality" who, in return for a few moments of fame, wants your soul?

Yes, Holly Holm may have defeated Ronda Rousey but Ronda may have gotten the last laugh. Her revenge might just be handing off to you, Holly, against your will and without your knowing, all the TV appearances, all the media scrums, all the late-night talk-show banter, all the impromptu morning talk-show MMA tutorials, all the patronizing hosts, all the standing ovations, all the morbid mocking curiosity, all that damned American fame, all the great Faustian bargains of late capitalism. If I were Ronda Rousey right now, watching poor Holly Holm drag herself sleepless and bewildered from one TV studio to the next to flash another smile and retell the same story she's told a thousand times already, I'd be thanking the gods for my sweet release.

In a recent Fightland article, sports psychologist Dr. Jim Afremow said that the demands of success, especially the kind of success enjoyed by Ronda Rousey—perfect success—can be a "double-edged sword," overwhelming life and happiness and a sense of self. "It's counterintuitive, but sometimes when fighters do lose and that winning streak ends, subconsciously there's a little bit of relief," Afremow said.

I'd be willing to bet, once the depression has lifted and the disappointment and shame have dissipated, that there will be a lot of relief for Ronda Rousey, not only because she no longer has to carry the weight of perfection around her neck but because she's no longer the poster-girl and ambassador for a sport that, until she came along, was held in contempt by the same people who were all of a sudden holding her up as a icon and demanding her time and her picture and her advice and her clever anecdotes. It's one thing to be famous; it's quite another to be the great defender of the loathed and loathsome, a diplomat of depravity in a land of crushing dullness.

I remember when the Ronda Rousey fame explosion first hit and she was being asked to demonstrate an armbar on every haircut-and-suit with a talk show and every blogger with a video camera. It was like asking van Gogh to paint a sunflower on every studio wall in Hollywood or Wallace Stevens to toss off a haiku for every sports reporter in the world, Now it's Holly Holm's turn: Tell me what was going through your mind when you threw that kick. How do you do that kick? Can you show me how to do that kick? Will you do that kick on me? On my co-host? On my sidekick? On him? On her? Everyone's getting headkicks!

This is the problem when a sport as deeply mistrusted as MMA starts creeping its way into the mainstream: Those who allow it in do so conditionally and condescendingly, like they're doing the sport and its stars a favor by allowing them into the world of acceptable entertainment. When a football player goes on The Tonight Show he isn't expected to smile graciously when the host asks him to demonstrate (in a suit and tie!) the intricacies of a running pattern or a perfect spiral. But that's the price professional fighters still have to pay, even in 2015, for a moment in the mainstream: We'll allow you into the hearts and minds and living rooms of Middle America but only on the condition that we get to treat you like a circus act and that you dance for us.

Poor Holly Holm. Little did she know that beating Ronda Rousey in a fight would be the easy part, that the psychic and spiritual minefield of American fame—littered with the corpses and blackened souls of a million smiling victims—would demand so quickly and so completely her resignation to its demands and submission in the face of its perils. She would have been better off getting her arm broken or her nose busted. Broken bones heal and embarrassment fades away, but fame lingers and its damage goes deep.