A few moments after his meal ticket had been battered senseless, Ultimate Fighting Championship boss Dana White was cornered in a nearby hallway.
A reporter peppered White with variations on the theme of "surprise." Was he surprised at Ronda Rousey's tactics? Was he surprised she hadn't adapted mid-fight? Was he surprised at how things had ended, in a human pile on the canvas?
An ashen White said, "Everything about that fight was surprising."
This was the look of a man who's watching the foundation of his castle cave in. White's spent two decades building UFC. After all that time, the edifice rested largely on Rousey's reputation. That can be rescued, but it will never be the same. And thus, White has to start over.
Rousey is more than UFC's biggest star. Over the course of eighteen remarkable months, she'd become its raison d'être. Through a combination of tactical dominance in the ring and playful charisma outside it, she'd cleansed the sport of its tawdriness.
UFC has spent its existence trying to rise above mixed martial arts' teeth-knocked-out-in-a-parking-lot beginnings. Rousey was the first major star who both penetrated the wider sports consciousness and did so without seeming like a sociopath. She had the back story and the sheen of vulnerability that draw people to great fighters. She doesn't have to play at being a real person in public life. It comes naturally to her. It's more of a skill than you'd imagine.
Every time a male MMA fighter blighted the entire discipline with his extracurriculars – Jon Jones nailed on a serious hit-and-run charge, Jonathan 'War Machine' Koppenhaver accused of attempted murder – Rousey was the riposte. She gave UFC its dignity.
I met her earlier in this year in a publisher's office in downtown Toronto. She was accompanied there by a bodyguard the width of a king-size bed stood on end.
"She's already had a couple of guys run up to her," he said. "I'd take them out, but she doesn't seem to mind. She's a nice lady."
That's what makes Rousey different from her colleagues, male and female. We can all agree she is a nice lady. Being a genuine fight star isn't just a function of talent. It must be mixed with that alluring push-pull emblemized by Muhammad Ali's public persona – dangerous and warm at the same time.
Rousey had it like few athletes I've ever met. She knew it, too, and enjoyed the back and forth. There is nothing more fetching than someone who appears to be having fun. And it's impossible to fake.
You were already getting the sense that, at 28, she was nearing the end. She wanted to go out undefeated. She talked about that compulsively. The prefight crowing was getting more vulgar and intense. When Rousey refused to touch gloves with Holly Holm on Saturday night, you thought to yourself that this wasn't very like her. It was as if she was losing the taste for it, and had to wind herself up with imagined slights to get going.
There was an element of self-destruction in how she fought Holm. Rousey's background is in judo. Her major weapon is the arm bar. Yet she insisted on standing and swinging at the rangier Holm, rather than take her to the mat. She was nailed square early, and fought most of the match in an apparent fog.
The final blows shredded her mouth to such an extent that she requires plastic surgery. That may be as big a problem as the loss itself.
Rousey has already begun transitioning into film. The last athlete who had as much potential in that regard was Dwayne Johnson. She'll play the lead in an upcoming remake of 1980s schlock-classic Road House. She's already big. She's on the verge of being huge.
It's not clear what Rousey makes to fight, but it probably isn't as much as you'd think – likely in the hundreds of thousands rather than millions. Her real earning potential lies in the promotional ancillaries, meaning her face is quite literally her fortune. So this would be a bad time to start picking up her first scars.
Historically speaking, fighters don't get better once they've been spectacularly defeated. At best, they tread water for a while. Why would Rousey want to do that? There is no way to add to her profile in the ring. She's taken as much from this sport as is possible.
She could return for a rematch with Holm, but now she'd have to win. Another loss would turn her from the greatest of all time to a pretender, which spills over into all the rest of her businesses. In strict terms of risk-reward, the smart move is to retire now and begin the next phase.
Will she want to quit now? Almost certainly not. Doing the hard thing when there's an easier way is what separates elite competitors from the rest of us.
But Rousey isn't just an athlete any more. She's a one-woman financial ecosystem. There will be plenty of smart people now trying to push her beyond her roots in the ring.
She was hospitalized after the fight. Her only communication was a short Instagram message: "As I had mentioned before, I'm going to take a little bit of time, but I'll be back."
She doesn't say what she'll be "back" as.
Holm is also a great fighter, but she hasn't a scintilla of Rousey's expansive, made-for-the-chat-show-circuit personality. On the men's side, it's all a bland selection of braying, excessively tattooed hooligans. A few may be more than that, but that's how they come off.
UFC won't lose its core audience, but the core isn't enough. To stretch beyond the backward-ball-cap crowd, it needs a crossover star. Rousey was all they had.
If she's done – and you're beginning to get the sense she may be – UFC isn't just damaged. It may be gut shot.
Cathal Kelly