Ronda Rousey: UFC champion reveals addiction to painkillers and father's tragic suicide as an eight-year-old in new autobiography

Rousey, 28, is the 'baddest woman on the planet'

Ronda Rousey could face Stephanie McMahon at Wrestlemania 32 (Josh Hedges / Zuffa LLC)

UFC champion Ronda Rousey has revealed the adversity she faced growing up in a new autobigoraphy that is released this month.

The 28-year-old, called the 'baddest woman on the planet by former boxing champion Mike Tyson, has shot to fame in the last year after a string of dominant performances in the ring as well as cameos in Hollywood films.

But Rousey has revealed that she had developmental delays as a toddler, how her father committed suicide when she was just eight and that she battled substance abuse as a teenager in California.

Rousey was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, depriving her of oxygen which caused developmental delays - she did not speak until she was four, she told the New York Post.

Rousey now commands m per fight and has had cameos in Hollywood films (Getty Images)

"At about six, I began speaking coherently in sentences," Rousey said. "When you're a kid, your brain figures out a way to re-organise."

But she was hit by tragedy at just eight when her father asphyxiated himself in the garage while Rousey and her family watched Nickelodeon inside. He had been seriously struggling with back pain after a freak accident years before, she said.

Rousey says she was transformed when she learned that her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, was a judo champion - the first American to ever win a World Championship, in fact.

By 16 she had dropped out of high school to train for the 2004 Olympics but failed to make the grade, before winning a bronze in judo at the Beijing Olympics.

However, she moved away from judo and become a bartender, where she would start each day with a shot of vodka and a cigarette and had a growing Vicodin and marijuana addiction.

"On more than one occasion," she writes, "sewage would come up out of the toilet and shower, and I’d come home from work to an apartment filled with s***. I didn’t think I could get any lower."

She started training again seriously in 2010 after three amateur fights became a professional, winning her first fight in March 2011 in just 25 seconds.

Rousey's star continued to grow and eventually president of UFC, Dana White, said he wanted to build a women's division around her.

She has won all five of her fights with the promotion, with each of the last two coming in less than 20 seconds, commanding a fee of around $1million per fight.

Her next fight takes place at UFC 190 on 1 August against Bethe Correia.