Ronda Rousey's mother much more than just a UFC star's mom

(This story originally appeared on usatoday.com.)

LOS ANGELES – Ronda Rousey’s mom is best known these days as … Ronda Rousey’s mom, an inevitable result of being associated with the woman who is MMA’s most high-profile fighter, a budding actress and a media sensation.

But there is much more to Dr. AnnMaria De Mars than being a figure of support behind her fist-flashing, choke-holding, elbow-popping daughter, champion of the UFC’s women’s bantamweight division.

The 57-year-old is a whirlwind of bluntness and intelligence, a former world judo champion, the holder of an MBA and a PhD in Educational Psychology, and the founder of Seven Generation Games, a company seeking to improve the math skills of under-served schoolchildren, especially those in Native American communities.

“I love being Ronda’s mom, just like with all my kids,” De Mars told USA TODAY Sports. “But, believe it or not, that is not the only thing I do.”

Rousey fights Holly Holm on Saturday the main event of UFC 193, in front of potentially 70,000 fans at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia. Meanwhile, De Mars will spend most of the week in her small office in Santa Monica, Calif., finalizing the latest educational game produced by her company.

In between shooting movies and racking up victories in the octagon of the UFC (whose president Dana White once said he would never promote women’s fighting), Rousey has maintained a strong involvement in her mother’s work. It is very much a family affair, with Rousey’s sister and the co-author of her autobiography, Maria Burns Ortiz, and her stepfather, Dennis De Mars, also playing a major role in the business. Rousey’s judo coach Justin Flores, a professional graphic designer, is one of the artists. Rousey is a principal investor, but there is more to it than that.

“We use Ronda in a lot of ways,” De Mars said. “We use her as one of our testers. We try to have games that have an easy and a hard level. We will bring her in and have her play them. If she can pass it, we at least know it is doable. There were a few that went on the market where the only reason we know you could pass the level was because she passed it.”

Rousey has played video games since her early childhood and advised regularly on ways to make the Seven Generation products more appealing.

“It is an awesome game,” said Rousey, who quit home schooling as a teenager in frustration at the regimented teaching methods. “I wish that when I was playing World of Warcraft I was learning about math and Native American history. I wish I had something like that. I really hope the game is given the opportunity to revolutionize the educational system because it really has the potential.”

There is also the inspirational factor of Rousey’s profile in sports. In one game, at a particularly challenging point, a Ronda character appears to give a motivational pep talk to the primary character. Such strategies are aimed at keeping children engaged in the activity and are a vital part of the process, says De Mars.

“A big problem, and this is more pervasive in lower income schools, is that kids will give up at the first sign of difficulty,” said De Mars, who worked closely with the Spirit Lake Nation, a native tribe based in North Dakota, in planning a game named in their honor. “People talk all the time about inequality in the United States. The big perpetuator of inequality is a lack of education. We are trying to counter-balance that.”

Ortiz, a nationally published sportswriter with a string of hilarious tales of herself and Rousey as children, said that producing game products to improve learning levels for Native Americans had been her mother’s passion for more than 30 years — and that everything was focused on the end result.

“Anything you can do to get kids excited about (math) or hear about it or learn about it (helps),” Ortiz said. “Someone once said, ‘How do you know if kids are playing the game because they really want to play the math games … or because Ronda told them to?’ If the end (result) is that the kids get better at math, then who really cares?”

Flores, a former wrestling and judo star who is currently in Australia helping Rousey prepare to take on Holm, said seeing the way the fighter and her family mix athletic pursuits with intellectual endeavors has been fascinating.

“It has been pretty eye-opening to work with them,” Flores said. “Obviously a huge amount of people see Ronda fight, but there is so much more going on. She is very intelligent and the ideas about education that her mom has are pretty incredible. It is a family that likes to win.”

For more on UFC 193, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.