Following the knockout of Ronda Rousey, LeBron James decided to show some sympathy for the former champion.
When athletes are dealt with immense pressure, more often than not they are unable to live up to expectations. People that have never been in the position will never understand, but with the way sports are covered nowadays, everything is critiqued and analyzed. Just ask LeBron James.
If anyone knows what it’s like to deal with pressure on and off the court, it would be LeBron. Ever since high school, the spotlight has been on the NBA superstar. One could argue that no athlete in the history of sports has dealt with more pressure to be great than the four-time MVP.
However, UFC fighter Ronda Rousey felt tons of pressure before her fight last night against Amanda Nunes. Everyone was anticipating Rousey’s return after losing her previous fight. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good showing for Rousey as she was knocked out within the first minute, which created shockwaves throughout social media. As you could imagine, plenty of mockery and memes surfaced the internet.
Despite all of the negative energy, LeBron sympathizes with Rousey.
“In sports, in general, they build you up as high as they can, put you on the highest mountain in the world, just to tear you down. That’s coming from somebody who has experienced it. And that’s exactly what she’s going through right now,” James told the Beacon Journal on Saturday. “That’s a fact. I know exactly how she feels because I was that athlete. I went through that.”
LeBron doesn’t like how the media portrays one side of the story without telling the other.
“You don’t know her mindset. You don’t know the drive, is the drive still there? You don’t know,” James said. “But you can tell that it’s built and built and built and built and built, they always make the teardown story more important than how long it took for her to actually get to the mountaintop.”
We’re not sure where Rousey goes from here, but if her career is going to resemble LeBron’s at all, she will bounce back just like he did after losing to the Mavs in the finals.
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