Only one title changed hands last night at UFC 207 from Las Vegas, but it felt like two did. The two championship bouts also demonstrated how much further women’s MMA still has to go, despite the progress it has made with the star power of Ronda Rousey.
Amanda Nunes was the defending champion in the main event, but she was certainly not the bigger attraction, not even close. The vast majority of the pre-fight build-up was focused on Ronda Rousey, the primary storyline concerned with her comeback.
UFC commentator Joe Rogan famously questioned the company’s marketing strategy leading up to UFC 207. To Rogan, leaving the champion out or giving her only a small spot in the promotion didn’t make sense. Nunes was the “reigning, defending, undisputed” champion, had beaten the woman who beat the woman who knocked Rousey out.
Not only was the UFC missing the chance to create another bankable star, but they actively diminished Nunes’ accomplishments to get where she was.
Thus to many casual fans, Nunes was doubtless merely a nameless, faceless golem whom Rousey would try to overcome after she first purged her personal demons. With the promo she cut after the fight, people will hopefully know Nunes now.
While the result was not necessarily surprising – I and many others picked Nunes – the manner in which she dispatched Rousey was. It was a clinical dissection, a mollywhopping of nearly unprecedented proportions in a fight at this level.
In the aftermath of the Rousey’s defeat to Holly Holm, there was a great deal of revisionist history regarding Rousey’s skills. Many wrongly claimed that she had never been that good to begin with. Her three and a half year stranglehold on the division, the manner in which she dominated her opponents, and the intimidating force she presented at the top prove otherwise. She was undeniably talented. Her combination of physicality and unbelievable grappling ability will make her a legitimate threat to any woman she ever faces, should she decide to step into the Octagon again.
What was obvious in hindsight after UFC 193 was that her striking, particularly her defense, never made any demonstrable strides. Even in fights she won, even those she won by knockout, Rousey was there to be hit. She was decked cleanly by Miesha Tate, Sara McMann, and Bethe Correia. As soon as someone forced her to strike without engaging in a wild brawl, Rousey faltered.
In Nunes, Rousey faced a woman whose punching power exceeded even her own, and it quickly became apparent that she had not adequately shorn up the holes in her defense. “The Lioness” battered her at range, punished her for trying to close the distance, and quickly extricated herself the few times Rousey was able to lay hands on her. The final nails in the coffin of Rousey’s invincibility were driven home soon after.
Nunes, like Holm before her, was a bad stylistic matchup for Rousey. And that is what sets the women’s bantamweight division apart from the men’s at this point. Who sits atop the women’s 135-pound division depends largely on the styles of the two fighters vying for that seat. “Styles make fights,” as they say. The old adage still applies to MMA in general, but nowhere is that more apparent than women’s bantamweight.
Holm’s counter striking and ability to stay out of the clinch and off the ground made her a bad matchup for Rousey. Tate struggled with the same things when she tried to dethrone Holm, but her superior wrestling allowed to her to come back, finish the fight, and take the title it seemed she would never win from Rousey. Nunes’ crazy athleticism and powerful punching were able to exploit Tate’s own poor striking defense and tendency to get clocked early in fights.
Nunes herself, despite her evisceration of Rousey, is not without her own flaws. She doesn’t offer much from her back when she is taken down and her poor gas tank nearly cost her a shot at the belt against Valentina Shevchenko. If “Bullet” can get by Julianna Pena, she might be able to in a five-round fight against Nunes. So, too, could Holm. The point being that most women, even at the top of the sport, have clear holes in their games and rely largely on one or two strengths to win.
We see this kind of thing less in championship MMA on the men’s side these days. There are men like Demetrious Johnson, Jose Aldo, Jon Jones, and Dominick Cruz who do everything well. They are among the best in the world at striking, wrestling, grappling, and fighting in the clinch.
That’s not to say the women’s side of MMA is worse than the men’s, in fact, female MMA has obviously been a huge boost to fighting overall and has evolved the sports to never-before-imagined levels. It’s just that it hasn’t had the same amount of time to adapt and evolve at the highest levels, and Nunes is clearly the personification of that despite her flaws.
That makes Cody Garbrandt’s dismantling of Cruz all the more impressive. There was no obvious weakness in “The Dominator’s” skillset. But Garbrandt’s hand speed allowed him to counter when Cruz lunged forward with punches, his wrestling ability and athleticism helped him stuff Cruz’s takedowns, and his poise enabled him to stick to his gameplan and not try to bull rush Cruz.
What separates men’s and women’s championship MMA at this point are the strategic nuances and the small in-fight adjustments necessary to beat a fighter like Cruz. Or to be a long-standing champion like Johnson, Jones, or Aldo. Women’s MMA hasn’t existed at the highest levels or received mainstream exposure for very long, so these things will come.
In addition to looking forward to Nunes’ next fight, I’m excited to see how female MMA continues to close the gap. That will result in fights that are just as compelling during the scrap as they are to consider beforehand.
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