The UFC’s red-hot summer continues Saturday night with Ronda Rousey defending the women’s bantamweight championship against undefeated challenger Bethe Correia at UFC 190 in Rio de Janeiro.
All eyes will be on Rousey, who has become one of the world’s biggest sports stars and has needed a grand total of 96 seconds to win each of her last three fights. She has been taken past the first round only one time in 11 career fights, finishing all of her opponents with nine submissions and two knockouts.
Correia doesn’t boast that kind of resume, but she has won all nine fights in her career, three in the UFC, and earned this title shot after defeating Shayna Baszler—one of MMA‘s four horsewomen, which include Rousey—by technical knockout at UFC 177.
No one will be expecting Correia to win, though she always has a shot because punchers have the ability to score a knockout in a hurry. There’s no secret to what Rousey will try to do, but no one has been able to stop it thus far.
What They Are Saying
Rousey has reached rarefied air in mixed martial arts, similar to where Anderson Silva was from 2006 to 2012. She’s become a fascinating novelty act with the talent to back it up, which is a difficult pairing that few athletes can claim.
The UFC has lost a lot of its top stars for one reason or another in the last two years. Silva is suspended for failing two drug tests. Georges St-Pierre hasn’t fought since November 2013 and has given no indication that he will ever return. Jon Jones is indefinitely suspended while he works through various problems outside the Octagon.
Developing new marquee superstars is now more important to the UFC than ever. Rousey and Conor McGregor look like the new torchbearers for the sport, which is why a loss for Rousey in this spot would hurt the company.
Yet Rousey is so versatile that losing wouldn’t ruin her career or drawing power, as Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports noted:
She’s a dominant athlete. She’s a terrific interview. She’s witty and wise-cracking, trash-talking and insightful. She’s attractive. And much like Oscar De La Hoya did when he rose to pay-per-view stardom in the mid-to-late 1990s, she brings a different audience from the standard fight crowd.
Rousey has a great following among women, and they buy her fights in larger numbers than they do for others.
As logical and true as that is, there’s a mystique following Rousey around right now because of how she is winning and that magical zero in the loss column. That does mean something in a combat sport, as Rocky Marciano and Floyd Mayweather Jr. can attest.
Rousey’s willingness to provide a quote, such as the one she provided to Damon Martin of Fox Sports about needing the rest of the division to come up to her level, does make her a dream athlete:
I need these other girls. It’s not like I could do this by myself. I need a dancing partner. The analogy I use a lot is these girls are like plants — sometimes you can grow a crop and harvest it year after year like Miesha and sometimes you harvest it once and it will never grow back, like I don’t think Bethe will ever come back after this.
With Rousey looking for challengers, it’s telling that this far into the preview, not a lot has been said about her opponent.
Correia isn’t the opponent anyone would have handpicked for a title shot, but as Jeff Wagenheim of Sports Illustrated noted, she figured out how to play the game after defeating Baszler:
The show apparently earned a thumbs-up from UFC reviewers/matchmakers because the Brazilian was given a shot on her weight division’s most brightly lit stage without a single top-10 victory. A rationale for this: Rousey already has beaten six of the nine women behind her in the SI.com bantamweight rankings, two others just lost fights, and the one remaining is Correia.
No one is giving Correia a chance to win this fight. She’s a 12-1 underdog, per Odds Shark, and doesn’t have a victory over an opponent currently ranked among UFC.com‘s top 15 women’s bantamweight fighters.
The combination of Correia’s anonymity and her opponent’s quick-finish ability will make a victory possible for the challenger only if she can force this fight into the final minute of the first round.
Correia does have stats to suggest she can give Rousey a challenge, based on how the champion prefers to fight.
Again, even trying to make a case for Correia, she has never gone against a fighter in the same realm as Rousey. Her three UFC opponents have a combined career record of 34-26, including 1-7 in the UFC.
It’s impossible to draw a parallel between Correia’s ascent and Rousey’s before she became a superstar because Correia isn’t destroying opponents. Rousey dominated four Strikeforce opponents in the first round before defeating Miesha Tate to win the bantamweight title in March 2012.
Main Event Prediction
There are a lot of arguments about the biggest upset in UFC history as of this moment. Matt Serra knocking out St-Pierre in 2007 is up there. Renan Barao’s loss to TJ Dillashaw in May 2014 is the most recent fight that can make a case for falling into that category.
Yet any argument would stop and start with Correia defeating Rousey if it were to happen at UFC 190. The champion is operating at a different level than anyone else in the women’s division right now. If it takes you longer to walk to the cage than it does to win your last three fights, things are going well.
Correia’s best chance to win this fight is catching Rousey with a hard punch that fazes her early, and she’s able to keep bringing the heat with her fists and avoid going to the ground. No one has been able to do it thus far, though, so don’t expect anything different now.
The good news is that the fight will take longer than 15 seconds, though not by much.
Prediction: Rousey wins via first-round submission.
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