Ronda Rousey is back in MMA with support and structure she lacked earlier in her trailblazing career

INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Ronda Rousey takes the framed newspaper down off the wall. She smiles warmly while she reads the headlines celebrating her glorious, dominant victory over Gina Carano — in a fight that is still a month away from actually happening.

Later that week, Rousey and her team hold a full dress rehearsal at her temporary training base in Las Vegas for her mixed martial arts comeback . Wearing her fight-night gear, Rousey goes through her warmup before making a cage walk complete with loud music and bright lights in an elaborate visualization exercise to prepare her 39-year-old body and her migraine-prone brain to thrive at showtime. “It just makes everything really special and fun,” Rousey told The Associated Press.

“It's so nice that everything is considered. ” These mental exercises are just a fraction of the massive upgrades in Rousey's training regimen as she prepares to take on fellow MMA pioneer Carano on Saturday night at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. Nearly a decade after she left the sport at the peak of her fame and the nadir of her personal happiness with MMA, Rousey now has a cadre of top-notch coaches and support staff, a world-class training setup and full mental support for her return.

That's noteworthy because Rousey became arguably the most famous athlete in women’s combat sports history despite having a fraction of the coaching help and outside-the-cage structure given to many top fighters. Rousey previously trained out of a storefront fight club in Glendale, California, with Edmond Tarverdyan, the coach to whom she remained intractably loyal while the entire sport questioned his knowledge and suitability — to the point where Rousey’s own mother, AnnMaria De Mars, publicly called him an idiot. When asked how she looks back on her years with Tarverdyan, Rousey said: “We accomplished a lot, but I think we went as far as we could together.