There was legitimate tension the last time we saw Alexander Gustafsson in the UFC Octagon. A single question lingered in the air.
Had the young Swede—blond beard glistening with sweat, piercing blue eyes radiating hope—won the UFC lig…
There was legitimate tension the last time we saw Alexander Gustafsson in the UFC Octagon. A single question lingered in the air.
Had the young Swede—blond beard glistening with sweat, piercing blue eyes radiating hope—won the UFC light heavyweight title from the great Jon Jones?
The fact we were even asking said volumes about Gustafsson‘s performance that night. No one else had come close to testing Jones, not even former champions like LyotoMachida, Rashad Evans or Quinton Jackson.
Gustafsson had made him work for it.
Normally a fight like that is a star maker. At the very least, it should have earned Gustafsson a regular spot in the lucrative co-main event position, adding his name and drawing power to fight cards that needed a little boost.
Instead, he’s relegated to an Internet stream.
His next fight, live in London Saturday against unheralded British slugger JimiManuwa, will appear in North America exclusively on UFC Fight Pass, a $9.99-a-month subscription service that features both live events from across the globe and a bevy of the UFC’s best historical content.
A subset of UFC fans, to be blunt, are in open revolt over the decision. Already paying more than $600 a year for the UFC’s monthly pay-per-view programming, they are not amused by what they consider reckless gauging, being forced to pay a premium for content that used to be free.
Likewise, Gustafsson doesn’t appear too enthused by the decision. He told The MMA Hour host Ariel Helwani that he was shocked by his placement on an internet card after flying so high in a pay-per-view main event.
“Well, that sucks a little bit,” Gustafsson said.“I didn’t know about that until just a few weeks ago, but a fight is a fight.”
The UFC’s Chief Content Officer Marshall Zelaznik told Bleacher Report that he sees the choice another way, of course.
“To me, and I know (UFC President) Dana (White) agrees, the fight between Gus and JimiManuwa is one of the best fights we’ve made this year, period, not just for Fight Pass but for any event so far in 2014,” Zelaznik said. “The number one ranked 205-pound challenger—who some people believe should have the UFC belt right now after the near-thing with Jon Jones—taking on probably the hardest-punching fighter in the division…I think this could be a Fight of the Year.
“So, yes, there’s no question this is a fantastic fight to deliver to our Fight Pass subscribers. But the service is about more than live events,” Zelaznik continued, building up steam. “We gain thousands of new subscribers every time we have live Fight Pass prelims, because the kind of fan who wants Fight Pass knows enough about the sport to understand some of the best fights of the night are on the prelims.”
Fight Pass, he told Bleacher Report, gives fans across the globe the opportunity to enjoy fights like Gustafsson vs. Manuwa at their leisure. The fights can start at an organic time in the venue, creating a better experience for the local crowd instead of starting the show too early or too late to fit in an American television window. The choice of when to watch, he says, is completely in a fan’s hands.
“It depends where in the world the fight is taking place and where the subscriber is. Almost all Australian and New Zealand subscribers watched the first two Fight Pass events live, as they are on a similar timezone,” Zelaznik said. “If we are talking about our subscribers in North America, we have a large corps of ultra diehard fans who, like myself, were up in the small hours last Saturday with a very strong cup of coffee watching the entire card from start to finish in real time.
“The majority of fans from North America, though, seemed to wake up, avoid the spoilers and then watch at a more civilized time of the morning. And then, finally, there were people hearing about the crazy KO in the main event later in the day and logging on many hours later to see what they’d missed. That’s the great thing here. Fight Pass allows fans to check out the action from around the world in their own time.
“And it is going to be different each event, depending on people’s own schedules and where the fights are taking place. We expect a lot more North American subscribers to watch the London card live than watched the first two events live. The card starts around lunchtime for east coasters and late breakfast for the west coast and is a little more humane time of the day, so we think everyone will watch this one as it happens.”
While the UFC, a private company, wouldn’t divulge the actual number of Fight Pass users or tell Bleacher Report how many UFC fans it expected to see Gustafsson in action via the power of the internet, Zelaznik says the subscriber base exceeds even the company’s most robust projections—three times higher in fact.
“We are very, very encouraged,” Zelaznik said, a sentiment that will make some fans, no doubt, very, very discouraged.
But there is no going backwards. Streaming a la carte-style content is likely the wave of the future. The UFC and the WWE are on the cutting edge of an ongoing collision between television and the internet.
I expect we’ll see more UFC stars exclusively on the internet as Fight Pass continues to find an audience. Gustafsson is Fight Pass’ first killer app. More are coming.
The UFC’s aggressive international expansion continues this year, as stops in Stockholm, Berlin and Istanbul were announced yesterday with more international dates imminent. Railing against Fight Pass, in short, is a bit like howling at the moon. It’s a steam engine, and it’s only picking up speed.
“UFC Fight Pass is going to continue have a great mix of cards which feature emerging and developing talent from around the world and cards which have these must-see fights like we have Saturday and next month with Big Nog vs. Big Country,” Zelaznik said. “We knew the live fights, the exclusive events and Fight Pass prelims, and our brand new ‘behind the scenes’ features would be very popular, obviously, but our subscribers are eating up our curated content.
“UFC Fight Pass is really giving the rich history of the sport a second lease of life. For example, we’ve been showcasing the ‘greatest feuds’ on a curated list and showcased fights like the Frye vs Shamrock fight from 2002. That was probably the best fight and best buildup for that entire year. But imagine there are UFC fans, people who may have become huge fans for the last decade, who’ve never seen that fight. Now, they log in to UFC Fight Pass, and there’s Dan Hardy or Chuck Liddell saying, ‘check this out!’ and now this classic fight is seen all over again.”
When you put it like that, it’s a pretty compelling proposition. For me, Fight Pass is a literal dream come true.
Less than 10 dollars a month to see Alexander Gustafsson punch someone in the face? To see legends like Don Frye again? I’m in. The UFC is counting on you being in, too.
The end was beautiful, a startling bit of violence that made even the most hardened fight fan wake up, shake off the ennui and feel. In one fell swoop, Dong Hyun Kim, the Korean grappler once best known for his stifling top control, spun right to avoid…
The end was beautiful, a startling bit of violence that made even the most hardened fight fan wake up, shake off the ennui and feel. In one fell swoop, Dong Hyun Kim, the Korean grappler once best known for his stifling top control, spun right to avoid a John Hathaway elbow and clocked his opponent with an elbow of his own.
It was arguably the most deadly pirouette in fight history, a moment worthy of Anderson Silva, as elegant as it was brutal.
But the means?
They were ugly, a succession of spinning drivel, missed haymakers and footwork so bad it left him stumbling.
Kim is no born striker. A striker, however, he’s become. In a business that sees even the icons opening up juice stands and worrying about making ends meet after a career, Kim had little choice. The clock on his career is ticking, and the 32-year-old fighter has a very short window of time to make any money.
Grappling and winning, even against some of the UFC’s best like TJ Grant and Nate Diaz, was never going to be enough. And so, like that, Kim sold his fighting soul to the “Stand and Wang” gods.
“I’ve continued to stack up the wins, but I wasn’t given a title shot, so I decided, in order to get a title shot, I had to change the way I fight,” he candidly admitted at the post-fight press conference broadcast, like the fight, for only the most hardcore fans on UFC’s online Fight Pass. “So, I decided to get much more aggressive and hopefully I’ll get noticed, and get a shot at the title.”
It’s hard to be too critical of Kim’s decision. It’s his to make, his body being sacrificed at the altar of sport. He has to make the toughest kind of economic bargain, deciding for himself how much of his future brainpower he’s willing to trade to pursue his dreams. It’s the ugly side of this sport but also the most noble, courage trumping common sense, guts decimating prudence time and time again.
As a purist, however, it’s a little hard to watch someone eschew his gifts for a style of fighting drunks in a bar would consider a bit unsophisticated. Kim, once a terrifying grappler, is focusing on delivering the “Zuffa special,” the kind of fight designed to win bonuses and the attention of UFC executives with short attention spans but not the kind of fight designed to maximize your chances of winning.
Yes, it’s worked well for Kim so far. He clocked Erick Silva with a hard left hand out of nowhere, following with a Donkey Kong-style finisher that can still make me shiver if I ponder it too long. And, after missing so many spinning backfists I lost count, he eventually made it work in devastating fashion, leaving Hathaway crumpled on the mat.
But a title shot? A future at the top of this sport? This isn’t the road that will take Kim there. A sophisticated striker will cut a path through his striking bluster that ends right on the tip of his chin. He has found the gift of power. It’s god-given and more than a bit tantalizing. What he lacks is the skill set to deliver it effectively against the best in the world.
The old Kim was en route to a potential title shot. He may not have made it there, but it was an honest attempt, pitting his best skills against his opponent’s best. The new Kim? He’s on the path to Chris Leben-ville. Only heartbreak and brain trauma await.
I understand why he’s made this decision. It’s economic and stark and a little sad. It’s also a reminder of something we can too easily forget —there’s a reason they call this the fight business and not the fight game.
Excellence. Fundamentally, it’s why we watch sports, to see human beings reach their ultimate potential, to see the body and mind pushed to their absolute limits.
Everyone in athletics searches for it, for those few moments that remind us of everything…
Excellence. Fundamentally, it’s why we watch sports, to see human beings reach their ultimate potential, to see the body and mind pushed to their absolute limits.
Everyone in athletics searches for it, for those few moments that remind us of everything we can be. Finding it, sometimes in unexpected places, justifies the endless hours we spend watching other people engage in mostly meaningless competitions and pursuits.
In the UFC, true excellence emerges only rarely—that intersection of heart, spirit and athletic ability. It’s the flick of an Anderson Silva front kick. It’s the economy of motion in Georges St-Pierre’s Superman punch. It’s Matt Hughes running across the Octagon, Frank Trigg on his shoulder like a sack of oats, looking for the hardest spot he can find to drop him.
In some ways, the UFC couldn’t have asked for a better ambassador to launch its bold foray into women’s fighting. Famously described by Dana White as a “dude trapped in this beautiful body,” Rousey is the perfect bridge to integrate women into the UFC. She’s undeniably a woman, beautiful and sporty, but not in a way that’s distractingly feminine to some less enlightened minds.
Rousey is easy to understand, her motivations as simple and myopic as any male fighter. Seek and destroy is her motto, and her success in that endeavor is inarguable. An incredible athlete, Rousey is strong, fast, teachable and adaptable.
She’s a born fighter, trained from an early age by a mother who would wake her from slumber in a sneaky armbar attempt. She’s won every fight she’s ever had, all but one in the very first round. Sara McMann, supposedly her physical equal, an Olympian with a resume just as long as Ronda’s, was dispatched almost as an afterthought, a training dummy to try out new techniques on, a punching bag with an Olympic medal dangling.
When it comes to demonstrating women’s capability for combat, Rousey stands on a pedestal with a handful of Marines, some helicopter pilots and Joan of Arc. She’s earned her respect, forcefully establishing women as equal partners in the UFC hierarchy.
Her status, despite some claims to the contrary, was no gift. She earned it in the cage, her athletic prowess undeniable to all but the most staunch misogynists. She’s brought the entirety of the women’s sport with her, easing what might have otherwise been a difficult transition.
But with that excellence comes no small amount of difficulty, especially for UFC matchmakers. Rousey is so amazing, on every level, that it’s hard to imagine anyone else as her equal. She outgunned McMann. She dispatched Miesha Tate with ease. These fights weren’t just one-sided—they barely even seemed fair.
Worse, it’s hard to picture future title challengers doing any better against Hurricane Ronda. Rousey is a queen with no court. There is no looming challenger—at least none in the UFC, where Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano do little to get anyone’s blood racing.
There is, however, another.
Before Rousey, there was an earlier snarly, muscle-bound champion, a force unlike anything women’s MMA has seen before or since. While Rousey has concentrated her brilliance on the ground, Cris “Cyborg” Justino made her bones on her feet, battering opponents with a stand-up attack at times technical, at times little more than barely contained rage.
She’s the truly fearsome opponent Rousey needs, that fans need, to continue building interest in women’s MMA. It’s the classic battle that has defined the sport from its inception—the striker versus the grappler. It’s size and strength against technique and cunning. It’s the kind of fight that makes stars into legends.
And it’s a battle we may never see.
UFC promoter Dana White sits on very dangerous ground. Rousey is, by his own admission, the whole reason he’s in the women’s MMA game in the first place. She has the potential for greatness, in the cage and at the box office, and he’s undoubtedly terrified at the very thought of her losing a fight at this stage in the building process.
But there’s also danger in babying a fighter too much. Fans can sense when a fighter is being protected, and they don’t respond kindly. Rousey’s potential, in fact, may be squandered without a true foil to test her. It’s only fire that produces a fighter worth embracing, the flames of competition hardening steel and forging champions.
Without Cyborg or another great challenger, Rousey only has the potential for greatness. With Cyborg across the cage, she can actualize it, reaching her true potential as an athlete and a drawing card.
Women’s MMA needs Rousey. And Rousey needs a challenge. She needs Cyborg. We all do.
Imagine this unlikely scenario—a week before the Super Bowl the entire roster of the Seattle Seahawks comes down with Legionnaires’ disease. The NFC champions, without a doubt, will be medically unable to perform. In short, it’s a …
Imagine this unlikely scenario—a week before the Super Bowl the entire roster of the Seattle Seahawks comes down with Legionnaires’ disease. The NFC champions, without a doubt, will be medically unable to perform. In short, it’s a national emergency.
What would NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell do? Would he ask the San Francisco 49ers to step into the breach, replacing their archrivals in the most important game of the season?
Would he delay the game several months, waiting for the Seahawks to regain their bearings?
Or, in a brilliant fit of inspiration, would he ask the Seahawks franchise to bring in a random collection of Arena League players, misfits and Vince Young to take it to the AFC champion Denver Broncos?
What if, in a series of movie montage brilliance, the guys off the street gave the professionals, led by Peyton Manning, a run for their money? What if they won?
It would be the biggest sports story ever. Rocky, Rudy and Buster Douglas would all immediately take a backseat to this game, the biggest upset in the history of modern athletics. But would it be good for business?
Maybe at first, caught up in the feel-good moment. But what then? Eventually an insidious and nagging doubt would set in. Why bother watching the regular season, some fans might ask? After all, if literally anyone can win, what makes even the best teams and players exceptional?
Professional athletics works because we buy into the notion that the athletes are special, a different breed than you or I. An upset of the kind I just described would throw all of that into doubt. In time, the feel-good moment of the year would have an immeasurable effect on the entire sport—most of it negative.
It’s a scenario that can almost immediately be dismissed. It’s unthinkable. A guy off the street, even a very good college player who didn’t make it in the league, couldn’t possibly come in and beat the best in the world. Everything we know about sports tells us that loudly and very clearly.
Only, no one remembered to tell UFC President Dana White. When “Suga” Rashad Evans went down with a knee injury just six days before his fight, White wasn’t able to postpone the fight or find a suitable last-minute replacement to take on the very tough Daniel Cormier, ranked fourth at heavyweight.
After all, no competent and sane UFC heavyweight or light heavyweight would want to take on Cormier with less than a month’s notice. He’s one of the most skilled fighters in the world, combining disciplined and multi-faceted striking with the kind of wrestling that twice put him on the U.S. Olympic team.
That’s not a package you want to open on Christmas morning without a lot of time to think about it and get ready. So there were no reasonable UFC takers.
That’s when the calls went out. Eventually one found its way to a coffee shop in Dana Point, California. It was there that Dana White found Pat Cummins, Cormier’s next opponent. Cummins, mind you, wasn’t sitting down to enjoy a hot beverage. He was serving them.
A fighter on the cusp of the pound-for-pound rankings, a fighter who is not competing for the heavyweight title simply because his teammate owns it, a fighter who has beaten Josh Barnett, Frank Mir and Roy Nelson in recent memory is fighting a coffee shop barista.
Yes, Cummins was a good amateur. Yes, he has impressed training partners as he’s tried to make his way in the sport. Yes, he has a bit of fighting experience. He’s 4-0, his wins stockpiled on the backs of opponents with a combined career record of 10-20-1.
No, he doesn’t have a chance. Or shouldn’t.
BestFightOdds.com shows Cormier as an overwhelming favorite. At -1300, it’s thought he is an almost certain lock.
It’s a word that nags.
Almost.
That’s not the same as certainty. That’s not a lock. Anything can happen. And what if it does?
What if Pat Cummins, walking from the coffee shop to the cage, a twisted analogue to “Tank” Abbott, the old-school legend who made a similar walk from the bar, manages to upset Daniel Cormier, a man seemingly destined to fight Jon Jones for the light heavyweight title?
It’s hard to take the idea of an Arena League team competing with an NFL franchise seriously. No one would pay to watch Serena Williams play someone off the street. The very idea of either outsider competing with the best in the world is preposterous.
What does it say about mixed martial arts as a sport that White and the UFC are selling the MMA equivalent? For years we’ve justified the existence of what was once called “human cockfighting” by emphasizing its sporting nature. The UFC is just another professional sports league, the argument goes, the athletes as impressive and skilled as their counterparts in traditional stick-and-ball sports.
If it’s true, if Cummins can beat Cormier, what then? Cormier’s one of the UFC’s 20 best fighters. A man off the street as good as one of MMA’s best? The years of hard work and sacrifice all gone, victim to the vagaries of chance and MMA’s “anything can happen” creed?
And then there are the unintended consequences. The UFC has spent two decades establishing itself as MMA’s premium brand. It’s a given that their fighters are superior to the competition’s. But, if Cummins can upend Cormier, doesn’t that position become a bit muddled? The moment an obscure fighter with no UFC pedigree beats a top star is the exact moment Bellator has a legitimate opening to claim one of their fighters is the best in the world. The slope here, it is slippery.
It’s an upset that would strike right at the heart of this enterprise. If Pat Cummins beats Daniel Cormier, is this a sport or at all? Or were the critics right all along—and MMA is nothing but a spectacle, an unpredictable buffet of violence, an orgy of the unspeakable, a street fight hiding in plain view?
Finding anything in Atlanta can be difficult, especially when the destination in question has the word “Peachtree” in the address. A different man might have given up. But I was looking for what was, to me at least, the holy grail—a magical place…
Finding anything in Atlanta can be difficult, especially when the destination in question has the word “Peachtree” in the address. A different man might have given up. But I was looking for what was, to me at least, the holy grail—a magical place that could solve many of my problems, both financial and emotional.
After what felt like hours of wandering, finally there it was. In a non-descript building on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, catty corner to a Chinese restaurant, I entered a strange new world.
For immigrants far from home, the Japanese grocery store must have been comforting. After all, if you were in search of seaweed-flavored chips or kiwi-flavored gummy candy, they certainly weren’t available in bulk at Costco. The store, and others like it, might be your only connection to a homeland thousands of miles in the distance, literally a world away.
Of course the needs of others was the last thing on my mind at the time. I was purpose driven and not one to lose sight of my goal when it was so close at hand.
I was there for Pancrase, K-1 and Pride.
In addition to Japanese brands, snacks and food staples, a good third of the store was devoted to walls of VHS tapes, each labelled in Kanji that meant nothing to my gaijin eyes. After a quick consultation with the owner and then with the owner’s teenage daughter, I had exactly what I wanted more than anything. I had another fix for my MMA habit.
My name is Jonathan, and I am an MMA addict.
In 1998, that was kind of a major problem to have. The sport was dying a slow and painful death in the United States. The UFC, the Super Bowl of mixed martial arts, was held in podunk towns and available only to those with the DISH network or an old-fashioned satellite. Copies were passed around like they were precious family heirlooms, with each generation devolving toward the unwatchable.
Tapes from Japan, where the sport was still a hot commodity, were likewise hard to get your hands on in a timely manner. Thus, the desperate search for the Japanese grocery store.
So, when longtime fans say that UFC Fight Pass is a streaming service that offers a repository of old fight shows as well as new fights from all over the world, they aren’t just whistling dixie. Being a fan of MMA was work. To have it all at your virtual fingertips, available at the click of a mouse for $9.99 a month?
That’s something worth celebrating.
I lay this at your feet to make my biases crystal clear. I want the UFC Fight Pass to succeed. It’s in my DNA, as a fight fan who has seen this sport struggle and claw its way from the brink of death, to want to see the UFC standing strong, to see its history and pioneers preserved for fans old and new.
And yet, after an initial wave of excitement, the mood among UFC fans has shifted a bit. The WWE’s announcement of a similar content delivery system that includes live pay-per-view streams has made the UFC’s offering seem small in comparison. Fear over what Fight Pass will be lingers, as do concerns over security and the potential for abuse.
Much about Fight Pass remains muddied, so I talked to the UFC’s chief content officer Marshall Zelaznik to get to the bottom of some of these issues. What follows is a breakdown of what Fight Pass is and what it is not.
Five questions. Five answers.
Questions of your own or thoughts to share? Let me know in the comments.
Ronda Rousey didn’t crack many smiles during this season of the UFC’s groundbreaking reality television show The Ultimate Fighter.
On the surface, there was plenty to grin about. Rousey, newly crowned as the UFC’s first women’s champion, was taking the…
Ronda Rousey didn’t crack many smiles during this season of the UFC’s groundbreaking reality television show The Ultimate Fighter.
On the surface, there was plenty to grin about. Rousey, newly crowned as the UFC’s first women’s champion, was taking the world by storm. Movie offers were pouring in. Every spare second seemed devoted to a television appearance or photo shoot, and the wider world was taking note of the blond bombshell who combined a quick wit, muscular physique and surfer cool into one tantalizing package.
Coaching The Ultimate Fighter was supposed to be another step in Rousey‘s rise, a sign of respect and validation. But instead of Cat Zingano, who had earned her way onto the show, there she was again, riding Rousey‘s wave of success, trying to take what Ronda had earned.
What might have been the culmination of a journey, one that took the young Californian from the 2008 Olympics to the top of the professional heap, had been soiled.
By her.
Miesha Tate.
“I shook her hand when she came onto the show,” Rousey told Bleacher Report, detailing what might have been the last moment of civility during the reality television tapings. What followed was one of the most intense seasons in the show’s eight-year history, a battle of words, wits and rage, Rousey meeting every challenge with her middle finger extended to the world.
And to Tate.
“It’s not a joke. It’s not an act,” Tate said. “It’s not like when the cameras turn off we’re buddy-buddy and she’s respectful. No. She’s flipping me off whether there are cameras there or not.”
But Rousey rejects the notion that she was a poor sport. Her actions, she says, were in response to Tate’s provocations, which included offenses like smiling and celebrating her team’s success. On the surface, nothing worth losing your cool over. Rousey, however, noted a pattern of disrespect, including some directed at her coach Edmond Tarverdyan’s Armenian ancestry—and didn’t take it lying down.
“I was taught that the people who are next to you are your family. If anyone insulted my family like that, I’d absolutely lose it,” Rousey said. “It was the way she did a lot of backhanded and cheap things to the kids on my team. And she really insulted my coaches and friends. When she’s just focused on me, that’s fine. I expect that. But when you come after my kids like that? I won’t accept it.”
No one who tuned in could possibly be without an opinion. Rousey‘s default reaction to Tate, no matter how innocuous the insult, was too obscene even for cable. The threat of physical violence lingered, a looming tension that was hard to escape.
Even for a fight show, it felt over the top.
“Ronda Rousey is not someone I personally like representing women’s MMA as a whole,” Tate said. “Because you can see how she really is. … It’s all about Ronda and the Ronda show. She doesn’t care how she comes off or how she represents women’s MMA. It’s going to be her way or the highway.”
As the new year and UFC 168 approaches, there are no fence-sitters. You’re with Rousey or you’re against her. Either way, believing that any emotion at all leads to a pay-per-view purchase, she’s just happy anyone cares at all.
“I think seeing women outside of the roles people are used to really incites a lot of powerful emotions,” Rousey said. “A lot of powerful positive ones and a lot of very powerful negative ones. That’s why it seems like nobody is just alright with me. It seems like they either hate my guts and want me to immediately die of a painful cancer, or they absolutely love me. And that’s good. It’s good to cause really polarizing opinions and really incite debate. Because that’s what causes interest.”
On the surface, the intensity of the rivalry doesn’t compute. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for the ill will, beyond the normal competitive spirit that drives high-level athletes.
But digging a little deeper, the real issue quickly rises to the surface.
Rousey, with all of her magazine shoots and late-night talk shows, is reaping rewards that some in the industry don’t believe she’s paid the sweat and blood equity to earn. And that doesn’t sit well with veterans like Tate.
“She’s so in the limelight that a lot of people don’t even know other women exist. Especially before this season of The Ultimate Fighter. Ronda was that ‘it girl.’ Ronda gets a lot of the credit for carrying women’s MMA on her shoulders, but I’ve got to say—there’s a lot of women who have been working really hard for a really long time to get women’s MMA to a place where there was even a platform for Ronda to stand on,” Tate said.
“I feel like Ronda is kind of standing on all of our shoulders. We’re the foundation, but she’s at the top of the pyramid. Everyone notices her and sees her, but all of the girls working for a really long time is what’s really gotten women’s MMA to where it’s at [sic]. I can’t just be one girl. She isn’t fighting herself.
“A lot of girls have given just as much to the sport; they just didn’t get nearly as much given back to them. The girls like MarloesCoenen, the girls like Shayna Baszler, the girls like MegumiFujii and Tara LaRosa. Those girls were fighting and not making any money. Not a dollar. There was no publicity. Nobody cared about it. It was kind of a sideshow. There was a freakshow aspect to it. It was given credibility by very few people. Those girls? I admire that. They kept doing it because they really loved it.”
Rousey agrees that before she came on the scene, women’s MMA wasn’t in the best place. The top box-office attraction, Gina Carano, had left the sport for a career in the movies. Her replacements like Tate, though capable in the cage, weren’t drawing the same kind of attention.
Yes, they toiled under the radar. But to Ronda, Tate and others share some of the blame for that.
“That’s why women’s MMA was dying before. That’s why, when Miesha Tate was the Strikeforce champion, no one was talking about bringing her to the UFC,” Rousey said. “She was just one of many girls trying to play the Miss America role. Trying not to piss anyone off to avoid accumulating any critics. Because they were really scared to take on what comes with that. To really become a real entertainer and a real personality—it brings a lot of hate as well as praise, and a lot of people can’t deal with that hate.”
Of course, in many ways Rousey is talking about graduate-level fight promotion, the little differences between a major drawing card and a run-of-the-mill champion. Such nuances were the furthest things from the mind of the sport’s women pioneers.
When Tate first started competing, women fighters weren’t featured on major cards. They weren’t mainstays on cable television. They didn’t even fight the full five-minute rounds men do, forced instead to fight for just three minutes per stanza. They were barely second-class citizens in a sport already on the margins.
“To be a female drawn to this sport takes something really special,” Tate said, suggesting society places women in a box, one that doesn’t often include combat sports.
“…Going against that grain takes a different mentality. Especially when you don’t have a support system and everyone’s looking at you like you’re freaking crazy. Because you’re a woman and what the hell’s wrong with you? Why would a girl want to do this? Why would you want to punch someone or get punched? That’s something that’s reserved for men. This is a man’s sport. You’re a woman. What’s wrong with you?
“I think people are really surprised that women fighters can do what we do. I think most of the time people are shocked that we aren’t these weak, fragile little flowers who will crumple if we exchange a punch with each other. We’re actually strong, capable professional athletes who put on one hell of a performance that people enjoy watching.”
Tate would prefer to let her actions speak for her. A product of both the Nick Diaz ethos and the seemingly incompatible ChaelSonnen mentality, Rousey is happy to feed the media plenty of juicy tidbits to keep the machine fed and the fight in the headlines.
But the feud between these two women is bigger than a difference in promotional philosophies or a grudge over not paying appropriate dues. It’s a difference in understanding.
“It’s just crazy to see the evolution. I wasn’t even sure at the beginning of my career that I would ever see the inside of the Octagon. I was hoping and dreaming and reaching for that, but I thought it might take more time,” Tate said. “…It’s hard to take it all in. Sometimes I have to take a deep breath—you know? I did it. Here I am. This is my goal. These are my dreams.
“I’ve been around this sport for about seven years now. There are girls who have been doing it longer, but I got into it when there was still no platform. Strikeforce hadn’t even brought women in yet when I started fighting. I’ve seen the growth and evolution of it all. I kind of came in at just the right time to have the appreciation for the veterans who really had to give so much, but also get to take part in the reward we’ve gotten for working towards that common interest and common goal.”
Tate believes that, because Rousey didn’t suffer through the hard times, she doesn’t appreciate the potential cost of every middle finger and every mention of death in the cage. She only knows success, catapulting to the top of the ladder others carefully constructed rung by rung, not quite understanding the tenuous ground upon which the whole sport is carefully teetered.
“For me, the big picture for this sport I love so much, sportsmanship is huge. That’s what turns this bloodsport, this human cockfighting, all the negative connotations that have gone along with MMA for so long,” Tate said. “We’ve had to battle these stigmas for so long. Companies wanted nothing to do with us. No one wanted to sponsor us. They were scared to death to even touch MMA. What was able to change that was us being able to show we’re just like any other professional athlete.
“We have rules in our sport. We train hard. We train on offense. We train on defense. Most importantly, we have sportsmanship. We aren’t fighting each other because we are angry, like bar brawlers who just want to knock someone’s head off. We had to change the perception of what people thought MMA was about.
“You don’t have to be angry to fight someone. You can turn this into a sport where there are points and there’s sportsmanship above all. You see the guys hug after the fight. There’s no hard feelings. They’re not angry. This is just like any other sport.
“I have a heavy appreciation for that, and it’s like Ronda doesn’t. Maybe that’s because she’s naive? She hasn’t been around quite long enough to realize where we started and how important it is to keep growing our image as professional athletes. Not emotionally unstable, angry people who just want to go out and break each other’s faces.”
To Rousey, the bad blood, the rivalry that the UFC and Fox Sports have pushed so heavily, is necessary to promote this particular fight.
In their first bout, Tate looked completely overmatched. She didn’t just lose the fight—she had her arm surgically dismantled by Rousey‘s signature move. Since then, she’s lost a bout to Zingano and done little to make anyone believe that a rematch would look any different than the first blowout.
“I think the rivalry is necessary. It really is. Because based on how the first match went alone, I don’t think a rematch would sell,” Rousey said in a moment of candor, perhaps giving fans a glimpse of the method behind her seeming madness. “There has to be a rivalry to bring interest in. It was the showmanship and entertainment that grabbed attention in the first place.
“Fortunately I’m at a point where it won’t be necessary anymore. Everyone knows about the women fighters now. It’s not like I have to blow horns and wave shiny things to get people’s attention. We have their attention, and it’s the sport and athleticism that keeps their attention. I’m grateful to be really maturing past that stage of my career.”
That sounds a lot like Rousey looking past Tate toward the future, and she does it often. Losing, she says, never even crosses her mind. It’s not even a possibility in Ronda’s world, which is why she stirred the pot a bit earlier this year when she speculated she could even beat UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez in the right circumstances.
That comment didn’t win her any new fans among hardcore MMA fans who scoffed at the very notion. But Rousey, who was recently ranked in the top 10 pound-for-pound fighters in the world alongside nine male counterparts, says she places no one above her. Even the baddest dude in the room.
“A lot of people took that to mean I was delusional and all these things,” Rousey said. “But they totally missed the point. I don’t want to put limits on myself. If I say the heavyweight champion of the world can beat me, then I’ll be entertaining the idea that there is a limit somewhere—that there are people who can beat me and people who can’t. And I’m never going to acknowledge that.
“There’s not a single person in the world I couldn’t find a way to beat.”
Tate, too, feels like this is her fight to win. While every fighter says that in the days leading into the bout, talking with her, you get the sense she really believes it. Though different from Rousey in tone and tenor, Tate sounds every bit as confident she will be the first to beat Ronda in the cage.
“I’m just discovering how strong I am,” Tate said. “How strong I am in my mind and how strong I am in my body. And there’s nothing that I’m not willing to do to win this fight. It’s all come together for me so well. I’ve never had such an amazing training camp. I’ve grown so much and matured so much, at the right time. I just really feel in my heart that this is the time.”
Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate fight Saturday night for the UFC bantamweight title at UFC 168. Jonathan Snowden is Bleacher Report’s lead combat sports writer and the author of three books on MMA. All quotes, unless otherwise mentioned, were gathered firsthand.
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