You may remember a video surfacing earlier this month of Ronda Rousey compacting a web show host’s ribs with a judo throw.It is not a new video—at all—but it made the blog rounds and served as a poignant reminder that Rousey is a…
You may remember a video surfacing earlier this month of Ronda Rousey compacting a web show host’s ribs with a judo throw.
It is not a new video—at all—but it made the blogrounds and served as a poignant reminder that Rousey is always one twist of the hips away from pulping your ribs and groin into pink gazpacho.
With this in mind, let’s turn to Tuesday’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where the judoka addressed the lack of formal oversight in amateur MMA fighting and demonstrated how easily she could go about snapping Jimmy Fallon’s arm.
Before the “armbar” demonstration began, Fallon locked in “Rumpelstiltskin” as his tap-out safe word—just in case.
“Your arm doesn’t go beyond 180 degrees,” Rousey explained. “It doesn’t take a lot of pressure [to break it], you just push it right at the elbow joint.”
Fallon tapped out quickly.
“That was scary,” Fallon said. “That’s like putting your head in the lion’s mouth.”
Letting Rousey use you as a practice dummy/human rag doll is not in your best interest, guys. She is a portable Spanish torture chamber from the 16th century Inquisition. She will break you.
Fast running! Meat cutting! Alley explosions!Reebok is gunning for all your sensory triggers in Jon “Bones” Jones’ new shoe commercial. The mixed martial arts champion is promoting the shoe company’s new line of ZPump Fusio…
Fast running! Meat cutting! Alley explosions!
Reebok is gunning for all your sensory triggers in Jon “Bones” Jones’ new shoe commercial.
The mixed martial arts champion is promoting the shoe company’s new line of ZPump Fusions—a reimagining of the Reebok Pumps you once swore made you jump higher and open up Fleer Metal packs faster.
Jones is seen sprinting through an urban sprawl as all sorts of symbolism pops off in his midst. I find the meat-cutting visual especially powerful, as it’s probably the most accurate representation of how Jones’ elbows operate.
As for the kicks, whether Reebok pump-style shoes actually boost speed and vertical leaping is entirely up to you. I find the pumps to be the ultimate placebo. If you believe pushing on this little tab makes you a beast, a beast you will be.
Who’s ready for another episode of “Could Ronda Rousey beat down [insert man/woman/dinosaur here]?”?
Apples-to-oranges hypotheticals are becoming as much a part of Ronda Rousey’s legacy as her first-round arm-bar victories. Such…
Who’s ready for another episode of “Could Ronda Rousey beat down [insert man/woman/dinosaur here]?”?
Apples-to-oranges hypotheticals are becoming as much a part of Ronda Rousey’s legacy as her first-round arm-bar victories. Such is her dominance in the Octagon that every day another #HotTake seems to emerge about which bipedal individuals could or could not defeat her in combat.
Throwing out a percentage of male MMA fighters Rousey could beat up is all the rage these days, but the most recent “what if” scenario involves Laila Ali, former professional boxer and daughter of Muhammad Ali.
TMZ recently caught up with the 37-year-old retired pugilist at Los Angeles International Airport. The conversation started with her opinion on the upcoming Mayweather-Pacquiao superfight (she thinks Floyd Mayweather Jr. will pull out the win), but shifted, as common law decrees all fighting conversations must do, to whether she could take Rousey.
An undefeated (24-0) super middleweight during her fighting career, Ali initially said the question was pointless. She’s a boxer, Rousey is a mixed martial artist. These are not one and the same.
“That’s like a question I’m not even gonna answer,” Ali said. “Because, for one, I’m not a UFC fighter. She’s not a boxer.”
That’s it. That’s all Ali had to do—state the obvious and dismiss the question as dumb hypothesizing over a bout that will never take place.
But then Ali gave an answer.
“And no woman in the world can beat me. Period,” Ali added.
Not even Rousey?
“Of course not,” Ali said. “She’s too much smaller than me anyways. She’s like the size of my daughter. My 3-year-old.”
Welp. She is her father’s daughter.
As for the size issue, Ali isn’t exactly a giant. The boxer measured 5’10”, 167 pounds during her fighting career. Rousey fights at 135 pounds and is listed at 5’7,”5’6” and 5’4” in different places (we should probably get that nailed down, guys).
It’s a solid difference, to be sure, but the disparity becomes less of an issue when Rousey’s folding your elbow like a lawn chair in the wrong direction.
Anyways, keep the hypotheticals coming. I can’t wait for Joe Rogan to prognosticate on which extinct species of elk Rousey could kimura the fastest. My money’s on Irish.
If football is a game of inches, mixed martial arts is a battle of frames—fractions of moments that carry fighters from one second to the next.
Fights are won and lost in these frames, and in a niche sport that’s turned into a mainstream m…
If football is a game of inches, mixed martial arts is a battle of frames—fractions of moments that carry fighters from one second to the next.
Fights are won and lost in these frames, and in a niche sport that’s turned into a mainstream melting pot over the last decade, MMA’s most dominant fighters have learned that the difference between winning and losing usually boils down to who can transition faster from one style to another.
With this is in mind, MMA animator Chris Rini drew up a poignant animation titled “Gone in 16 Seconds.” Rini’s work illustrates how fighters implement a host of different techniques in their fights. Moreover, it reminds us that Ronda Rousey is a terrifying and clinical monstrosity.
After reeling off the roots of popular MMA fighting styles, Rini breaks down Rousey’s breathless first-round dismissal of Alexis Davis at UFC 175. In 16 seconds, he shows how Rousey used more than a half-dozen moves based in boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and other disciplines to bring Davis to the mat and butcher her.
It’s an artful vignette of organized violence and a reminder of how complex the sport has become over time. It’s also simple, in that Rousey is a force of nature and should probably be banned for everyone’s safety.
Dan is on Twitter, remembering that he can’t even reheat coffee in 16 seconds.
Moments after dispatching his opponent, Dusan Dzakic went to work saving the man’s life.Dzakic, a Serbian MMA fighter, won his bout at Serbian Battle Championship 4 in December by submitting Croatian fighter Sebastijan Emini with a chokehold. Emi…
Moments after dispatching his opponent, DusanDzakic went to work saving the man’s life.
Dzakic, a Serbian MMA fighter, won his bout at Serbian Battle Championship 4 in December by submitting Croatian fighter SebastijanEmini with a chokehold. Emini’s tap-out came not a moment too soon, as the Croatian was literally choking to death in Dzakic’s grasp.
Deadspin’s Kevin Draper spotted footage of the scary moment (tap-out occurs around the 4:15 mark). Dzakic released Emini, recognized the danger before him and immediately began helping to resuscitate his opponent.
Emini eventually recovered thanks to Dzakic and the help of the medical staff. Even more, he had the strength to stand as the judge awarded Dzakic his victory.
The two men shook hands after the fight in what appeared to be a very earnest show of mutual respect.
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Chris Weidman found the life of a stranger in his hands Thursday morning.
The 30-year-old mixed martial artist champion was going about his preparations for the day when he suddenly found himself frantically working to save the life of his 94-year-old …
Chris Weidman found the life of a stranger in his hands Thursday morning.
The 30-year-old mixed martial artist champion was going about his preparations for the day when he suddenly found himself frantically working to save the life of his 94-year-old neighbor.
MMAFighting.com’s Shaun Al-Shatti brings us the story of Weidman’s desperate attempts to stabilize an elderly woman who would have surely perished had the fighter not heard her cries for help.
Weidman told the story to Al-Shatti, explaining that his day began like any other.
“I was supposed to go pick up Stephen Thompson and his brother at the airport, LaGuardia, this morning,” Weidman told Al-Shatti. “So I was trying to clean out my car and it was a torrential downpour this morning. So I’m cleaning it out and all of a sudden I started hearing this noise—’Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!’”
Weidman said he went out into the rain and saw a figure down the block standing in a driveway on the phone. He said the figure’s body language didn’t appear panicked, and he assumed the sound was coming from someone else.
He went back to cleaning his car but decided to take a drive down the block when the noise continued.
“I had my window down and I started listening,” Weidman said. “And as I’m driving past the person, I could realize it’s an older lady and she’s yelling, ‘Help me! Help me!’”
The fighter jumped out of his car, ran to the woman and saw her bleeding profusely. He then brought her to his car and drove back to his garage, where he called 911 and tried to stop the heavy bleeding.
“I call 911 and am like, ‘Listen, I have a really elderly lady here, she’s bleeding really bad, doesn’t look good. We need someone here immediately.’”
The next 20 to 30 minutes felt like an eternity, Weidman told Al-Shatti. The fighter called the police multiple times, eventually having to phone a friend on the force to get paramedics to the scene.
He maintains that, during that time, the woman wavered between states of shock and panic. She said that she fell through a glass table inside her home, had five grandchildren and wanted to live “one more year.” Weidman held paper towels over her wounds and tried to keep her calm.
“I was there, trying to have her talk about normal things to distract her. … I’m telling her, ‘You’re fine! You’re fine! You’re not dying today!’ … I’m trying to talk to her about her dogs, anything to take her mind off it.”
The paramedics arrived and took the woman to the emergency room. Weidman said the woman was coherent when she was being taken away, but he doesn’t know her current condition. The fighter said he feels lucky to have been in the right place at the right time to respond.
“I’m very lucky and blessed that I actually went that way to see what the heck that noise was, because otherwise, the block that I live on is pretty much a dead end,” Weidman said.
“No one drives down there, and she was in shock. She wasn’t able to make phone calls. She had her phone in her hand, but she wasn’t going to be able to make a phone call. … So she was smart, she crawled outside and was yelling ‘help me’ in the middle of the freaking rain.”
Weidman said the encounter has given him a new appreciation for the jobs of first responders, paramedics and everyone whose job it is to save lives.
“They’re the heroes and no one is hearing about it,” Weidman said. “I just happened to be at the right place, right time.”
The woman’s identity has yet to be discerned, but we’ll keep you updated as more details emerge. Suffice to say, however, Weidman’s actions on Thursday saved or prolonged a life very much in need of a hero.
