Oh well, so sad too bad. I feel for Rhonda. But now maybe we can be done with all the hype and excessive build up for her fights. The air of invincibility is gone. No more bum of the month club. If she continues to compete in the UFC she is going to be just another one of the girls. Well not maybe not JUST one of the girls, since she was a big enough media draw that the UFC saw fit to pay her 3 million bucks even for losing. It was her past performance that convinced Dana White to accept women into the UFC in the first place. Considering the money Rhonda has made for him, win or lose, he is probably not sorry he did. She has the potential to remain a poplar figure and sell a lot more tickets and pay-per-views, so long as she doesn’t further deteriorate in her fighting ability and lose more fights.
One thing that makes MMA fighting so exciting is that it is very much a rock-paper-scissors type competition. Stunning upsets are common because style mismatches are frequent. There are many ways to defeat an opponent. A fighter can come from behind to win the fight suddenly and unexpectedly by knockout or submission. Decisive victories are more frequent than decisions. The MMA fighter has to be a master of many different fighting techniques and styles, otherwise he is likely to encounter a fighting strategy he is unprepared to counter and overcome. As happened with Rhonda in her last two fights. Effective strikers are starting to dominate in women’s MMA just as in men’s MMA. Rousey is going to have to learn how to box if she wants to regain the championship. Her judo, while extremely effective and a wonder to behold, isn’t enough anymore.
It is interesting, Jeremy, that so few people thought that there would not be a grappling to striking trajectory in the women's division as there was in the men's division. I suppose this is a jello wrestling bias built into the male brain...
-James
Vox Day says Told Ya!
(Told Ya- Vox Day)
""I would like to see her retire, I would have liked to see her retire a long time ago. Who wants to see their kid get hit? Cause she's got a lot of talent in a lot of other things. Movies, writing, producing, she's really, really smart. I told her that at the beginning when she started this. I said you're smart and beautiful — let the stupid people get punched in the face. Sorry stupid people." -AnnMaria De Mars, Mother of Rhonda Rousey and first ever world judo champion from the USA, 12/30/2016
LOL! Ah yes James, the Jell-O wrestling angle. There ARE many things that could be done to make women’s sports more appealing to the majority of sports fans, aren’t there? Like I bet that if the WNBA made the women play braless and in high heels their games would get a lot more viewers. But you make a good point about the drift from grappling to striking in MMA. The fact is when the UFC evolved from a spectacle to a regular combat sport the promoters adjusted the rules to encourage standup striking. They knew that standup fighting would be more visually appealing to fans than rolling around on the ground would be. They knew they had a money-maker in MMA if they could keep it from becoming boring. Even Judo matches tend to be uninteresting to people who are not practitioners of the sport; there is very little of the spectacular throws one is treated to in demonstrations of the art. Instead in competition one sees a lot of seemingly indecisive grappling until one fighter earns enough partial points to win a full point. It’s hard to execute a clean move on someone who knows full well how to block it. By the same token the MMA fighters quickly learned that it becomes much easier to apply the various arm holds and choke holds on an opponent who knows how to counter them once you’ve stunned and distracted him with hard punches to the head. Hence the steady move toward greater boxing efficiency. Rhonda Rousey was so dominant for so long because as an Olympic silver medalist she was much better at Judo than her competitors were at anything else. She turned out to be kind of a one-trick pony in that regard. In her last two fights she met fighters who were good enough at boxing that they could keep her from getting close enough to use her Judo. She got knocked out before she could close the distance. The fact that MMA fighters aren’t wearing a gi to grab ahold of also tends to thwart fighters with Judo backgrounds since it limits the numbers of techniques they can use. Now if Rhonda wants to be competitive at a championship level again she is going to have to start from scratch and learn how to be a champion boxer. Her mother doesn’t seem to think it’s worth the effort. Or have much regard for the striking arts at all for that matter.