Ronda Rousey shares career advice for other female fighters

Ronda Rousey knows a little something about success. The former UFC women's bantamweight champion and Olympic bronze medalist parlayed a fighting career into Hollywood opportunities, a professional wrestling stint, features in video games and authored a graphic novel.

She made her professional mixed martial arts debut in March 2011. A year later she was the Strikeforce women's bantamweight champion. The next year she was making her walk to the octagon and a household name.

She returns to the cage on May 16 against fellow women's MMA pioneer Gina Carano. Following a recent press conference to promote the upcoming fight, Rousey shared some career advice for other fighters.

"I think a lot of them (female fighters) need to realize that just going in and fighting isn't the whole job and putting a lot of thought into like media and stuff like this and being able to get your message across because your job isn't to win fights, it's to get people to watch your fights," Rousey said.

"It's awesome if people are watching the brand and then they see your fight while it's there, but I think it's important for all the women to kind of learn from this and from what me and Gina are doing and what we've done in the past. We don't just show up and fight. It's storytelling. It's I put a lot of thought into anything that could be asked of me," continued Rousey.

"I think a lot of girls now are just going to do media and they're just winging it. And it shows. You need to put just as much effort into promotion as you do into fighting if you want anyone to watch your awesome fight."

"Rowdy" picked upon some useful knowledge about promotion while in the WWE and believes it carries over to promotion in MMA.

"People need to realize yes, they are athletes and they're doing a sport, but it is your job to also be an entertainer and to get people interested in your fight," she said.

"There's something that I kind of learned in pro wrestling is every single time that we had a match, we'd ask ourselves, 'What's the story of the match?' And so, I would advise everybody in MMA at any matchup that you have, think, 'What is the story of my match? What is something unique that just the two of us bring to the table that you would never see in any other matchup?' And put a lot of thought into it. Don't just show up and be like, 'Oh, I don't care about this because I don't care about fame.' Like, okay, all right, you're really awesome. You're really cool, but it's not your job to be cool, it's to get people to watch your f**king fight. So, please think about it."