Ronda Rousey became the first woman inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame on Thursday during a ceremony in Las Vegas, ESPN reported.
Rousey, an Olympic bronze medal winner in judo, dominated the women's ranks from 2012 to 2015, winning her first 12 professional mixed martial arts fights, including six in the UFC, all by submission, the broadcaster said.
ESPN said all but three of those fights were decided in under one minute, setting records for four of the five fastest finishes in UFC women's bantamweight history. She successfully defended her bantamweight belt six times.
"I am not the first person who had the ability to do this, but I am here because I am the first person you took the time to watch," Rousey told the crowd during her induction speech, noted ESPN.
"That you put the energy into supporting. Because of you, I am the first woman standing up here accepting this incredible honor. May I be the first of many," she added.
Rousey, who recently moved on to the professional wrestling circuit under the WWE umbrella, told the audience that the notoriety from UFC helped make her a household name. Along with joining the WWE, she has been appeared in big budget movies like "The Expendables 3," "Furious 7" and "Entourage."
Website MMAFighting.com pointed out how she helped popularize the sport, becoming the first woman to headline a million-selling UFC pay-per-view package, doing that twice.
"For the first decade of my athletic career, I was at the pinnacle of athletic accomplishment and no one seemed to care," Rousey said, according MMAFighting.com. "Nothing changed, and then you came along. The only reason why anything that I ever did had any effect on the world is because you took the time to let it affect you.”
"I look around and think, together we built this, this division, this sport, this revolution. Together we have redefined what it means to be strong, to be sexy. We have changed what it means to 'fight like a girl,'" she added.
Rousey's last two fights ended her UFC career with upset losses, first to Holly Holm in 2015 and then she was knocked out in the first round by Amanda Nunes.
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