The story of Ronda Rousey’s rise to prominence, both in the “real” world and the sometimes absurd world of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, has been one of swiftness.
Rousey had a rocket attached to her back from the moment Sean Shelby signed her for the Zuffa-owned Strikeforce promotion, because she was a promoter’s dream: She had a world-class athletic pedigree, could talk and was a relentless worker. The fact that she is a beautiful woman was icing on top of the cake for the owners of the world’s biggest MMA promotion.
These days, the UFC’s two women’s divisions are gaining strength and momentum, and it’s still due to Rousey, her dominance and her swiftly-increasing popularity. Without her, there may not be one women’s division in the UFC, let alone two, though it is hard to imagine the UFC in 2015 continually overlooking female fighters even if she were not in the picture.
But Rousey’s contributions to the sport go beyond just another checkpoint in the ever-evolving Zuffa myth—she is the real deal and likely the most important fighter on the UFC roster.
And it’s easy to look at Paige VanZant, the charming and charismatic strawweight, and assume that the UFC wants her to be the 115-pound version of Rousey. Of course it does. In a perfect world, VanZant can anchor that division for years to come, especially since she is just 21 years old.
She has some of the same traits as Rousey, though she is absolutely missing the world-class Olympic pedigree that propelled Rousey from poverty to the top of the world. She trains with a great gym at Team Alpha Male and appears, by all signs, to be a hard worker who is willing to learn and get better. And, of course, she is a beautiful woman, and that will lead people to surmise that she is getting opportunities (Reebok) that others do not simply because of her looks.
Some of that is true, at least to an extent. Reebok signed her as one of its exclusive athletes before the UFC’s uniform deal went into place in July. The company signed her, in fact, before it signed former champion Carla Esparza (who never did get one of those nice exclusive Reebok deals) or current champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk.
Reebok didn’t sign VanZant because she was tearing the house down with her athletic performances; it signed her because it saw someone who was marketable and had the potential to be a great spokesperson for the brand.
But that’s the key here. VanZant, who scored a dominant one-sided win over an overmatched Alex Chambers at UFC 191, is still all rough potential and promise. She might be an eventual gold mine for the UFC, but at the moment she’s still a piece of coal in need of plenty of work.
Even on this night, she conceded (in a roundabout way) that she still needs work.
“I worked a lot of technique for this fight,” she said after the fight. “But it kind of went out the window and I just brawled like I usually do.”
The good news is that it appears the UFC is fully cognizant of not only what it may potentially have on its hands but of what it currently has: a prospect in need of a lot of grooming.
The unwise decision here would be to catapult VanZant into title contention immediately. She went into Saturday night’s fight ranked No. 7 in the world, but that’s a misleading number. She might be able to beat several fighters in the top 10 of that strawweight division, but from what we’ve seen so far, she will struggle mightily if matched against Esparza, Jessica Aguilar, Claudia Gadelha or the mighty Jedrzejczyk.
Yes, VanZant dominated Chambers. But she was expected to. She closed as a near 16-to-1 favorite here at the MGM Grand, which is nearly unheard of in the UFC, and especially for a prospect who was facing someone who has been in the sport for quite some time.
In that domination, you could see moments where VanZant, with her frenetic energy and nonstop action, displayed stuff that may bode well for her in the future. But at the same time, her penchant for wading into striking exchanges with her chin in the air and her head not moving one iota? That’s bad. It may work against Chambers and others, but against Jedrzejczyk, that trait will spell doom.
So far, though, the UFC must be applauded with its handling of VanZant. Rushing her to the top too soon would be disastrous, at least in the short term, and the promotion and the men who book the fights seem to have a grasp on that fact. All too often we have seen them jump the gun—to favor short-term money over sustained income. But here, they’re taking the right approach.
VanZant could be something special someday. There’s no need to try to force that “someday” to immediately become “tomorrow.” If she’s going to be a superstar and title contender, it is better to let her arrive there on her own terms than to push her before she’s ready.
Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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