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Following her loss to Holly Holm in 2015, the public profile of Ronda Rousey changed drastically.
Not only was the dominant UFC champion made to look human for the first time and knocked out in devastating fashion, she all but disappeared from the media after.
Before that fight, "Rowdy" was the poster girl for female combat sports and was helping to break new ground in the UFC but all of a sudden, she went quiet.
This led to a lot of criticism with people questioning whether all it took for the always confident Rousey to walk away was the first loss of her career.
In a recent Instagram Live in promotion of her new book, "Our Fight", Rousey pulled back the curtain on how she hadn't been able to speak in detail at the time due to the concussions she had faced in her time competing in both Judo and then MMA.
The former women's bantamweight champion said that she was forced to put up this wall as if she came out and spoke about it, the health concerns could stop her from ever fighting again.
"Big" John McCarthy gave his thoughts on this during a recent episode of the Weighing In podcast where he spoke about the health effects Judo can have on a person as well as MMA.
He said that whilst all of that makes sense, Rousey's subsequent move to the WWE in later years makes for a confusing path to pursue given her health concerns.
"I can see where the concussions happen with Judo too you know but then going to the WWE isn't going to help. Let's be honest because those falls off of the ropes and stuff, your head coming down, all those. There's a lot of concussions in professional wrestling even though those are predetermined."
'Big' John McCarthy Says The Pressure On Ronda Rousey Didn't Help Her Against Holly Holm
As previously mentioned, before the Holm loss at UFC 193, Rousey was inescapable.
Her profile was continuing to grow with each fight and the UFC champion was making real strides in the mainstream.
When speaking on Rousey's recent comments, McCarthy gave his own interpretation of what he was witnessing at the time with the global sports star that she was becoming.
He said that ultimately, there's no way that her growing profile and media duties didn't play a role in the sudden drop in her MMA career.
"There was so much going on with Ronda before her fight with Holly Holm. So many things going on and you look and you go nobody can put the effort into training that they need to put in with all the media and all the special things going on and the Ellen shows and all these things that, they were all good for Ronda, they were good for the UFC but it takes a toll and that toll is you don't get to that same level and your abilities start to maybe not...
"Every time you do a camp, the reason you do a fight camp is you're taking and you're elevating yourself all the way through that camp to get to that pinnacle point before the fight that you're the best that you can be. That's what a training camp is for.
"When you've got everything else happening around you and you're having all these arrows going in different ways and you've got to follow each one and you got to handle this and you got to do this and then over here and then over there, you can't focus on what got you there.
"It happens to everyone, it happens in different ways but Ronda was a huge star for the UFC. Nothing against Holly but the UFC did not want Holly Holm to win that fight. That's not the way they wanted it because Ronda was doing things for them and it took a toll."
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