Ronda Rousey’s moral strength as compelling as dominance in octagon

The main boulevard in Sarajevo was ghostly quiet on Thursday evening and images of Ronda Rousey speaking on television were easily visible in the cafes and bars.

This city seems far removed from the UFC and from Melbourne, where Rousey will attract a sell-out crowd on Saturday night for her latest fight. But her gospel continues to travel and with the news that she has publicly endorsed Bernie Sanders, the veteran socialist-democrat politician, rather than Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race for the 2016 presidential election. "Because he doesn't take any corporate money," was the tidy rationale which was also a sharp rebuke of all other front-runners.

Echoes of Michael Jordan's most famous political comment sounded through Rousey's latest proclamation. Jordan was at the peak of his athletic fame when he was asked about why he couldn't endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt in his bid for the North Carolina senate seat in 1990. "Republicans buy sneakers, too" came the smooth, lightly caustic retort.

Even if it has never been authenticated, that remark is one of Jordan’s most quoted and that it has never been forgotten is due to the fact Jordan has been as aggressively neutral in his political views as he has been reckless and cutting in his remarks about the various on-court opponents he toyed with season in, season out.

He was at the opposite end of the spectrum to Muhammad Ali when it came to using his profile and his influence to support a cause or take a stance on anything beyond his own brand kingdom.

In just four years Ronda Rousey has completed a dazzling metamorphosis from the obscurity of Olympic judo to the most charismatic athlete in the UFC stable. In doing so, she has bucked the vanilla trend which has reduced global sports stars into saying absolutely nothing, very carefully and with guarded politeness – unless they are participating in a lucrative advertising campaign in which they lightly poke fun at themselves.

Presidential bid

Most of Rousey's arguments are put plainly and powerfully. "I just wouldn't want that guy to run my country," she said of why she won't be backing Donald Trump in his presidential bid. "I don't want a reality TV star to be running my country."

To the vipers who attacked her physical appearance by means of the same stupid insults that Serena Williams has had to contend with, she fired back with: "Listen, just because my body was developed for a purpose other than f***ing millionaires doesn't meant that it's masculine." She was happy to pose for ESPN's body issue magazine but made a point of emphasising she wouldn't be losing weight in order to participate.

There is no shortage of warnings and studies on the pressure and potential damage inflicted on girls and young women by the insistent portrayal of an idealised type of feminine beauty and body-type.

Yet the scrutiny – the public shaming through unflattering photographs of any female celebrity who dares to show herself in public looking less than perfectly made up or appearing to have gained some weight and the free-for-all on the comments section below – makes the circle ever more vicious.

Cindy Crawford’s famous observation – “Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford” – was memorable because it was a rare attempt to point out that so much of the beauty industry is based on smoke and mirrors.

So that is why it is striking and significant when someone of Rousey’s influence and popularity just calls it as she sees it: “Women are constantly being made to feel the need to conform to an almost unattainable standard of what’s considered attractive so they can support a multitude of industries buying shit in the pursuit of reaching this standard.”

When did we last hear the mainstream pop cultural influences such as Beyonce (#21 on Forbes' list of most powerful women) or Angelina Jolie (#54) call it like this?

Rousey has her critics and she certainly does not fit easily into the traditional feminist perspective: some people are uneasy with her fondness for declaring that she is never going to be a ‘DNB’, or a ‘do-nothing bitch’.

She attributes her fearlessness to her mother, herself a judo champion. Her recent autobiography contains some uncomfortable questions for the domestic-violence lobby after her graphic account of the beating she meted out to a former boyfriend: “Then I grabbed him by the neck of his hoodie, kneed him in the face and tossed him aside on the kitchen floor.”

Court room

If this sentence was carried in the autobiography of a male star, sports or otherwise, it would end up in the court room. However, as she explained – without any sense of having to justify herself – in Melbourne over the past few days, she was reacting to the discovery that the man had taken inappropriate photographs of her without her permission.

Their encounter became a struggle when he blocked her path from leaving the apartment. So her argument is she was used her fighting ability in self-defence. “I have lawyers who check these things out,” she told the press on Thursday.

That off-hand remark contains the nagging fear Rousey’s outspokenness and unapologetic show of female independence may become so carefully choreographed that it is in danger of becoming just another marketing tool. Maybe other pop cultural icons will study her form and decide that the best way to sweat the product is to ‘become’ political and to express their views.

That would be a shame. In the four years since she burst through the male-only preserve of UFC, Rousey has joined the ranks of sporting mega stardom. In the summer, LeBron James responded by Twitter to a fan who asked how long he thought he would last in the ring with Rousey. “As long as she wanted me to last.” Conor McGregor was more emphatic in his response: “She would have me on my back in one second flat.”

The Docklands stadium in Melbourne holds 53,000 but UFC's real crowd is on pay-per-view where a global audience will tune in the expectation that Rousey will claim her latest win, against Holly Holm, in mere seconds.

The best thing about Rousey is that she made it this far on her own terms, gloriously independent of what anyone, male or female, thinks of her – through moral as much as physical strength. Ronda Rousey represents the kind of feminist independence that Hillary Clinton, for all her claims, can only dream of. She must privately wish she had Rousey in her corner.