In her last two UFC title defenses, bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey has beaten opponents Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano in a combined 30 seconds.
That is not a misprint.
Matched up with the very best women in world, Rousey has barely managed to break a sweat. It took her longer to explain her armbar win over Zingano than it took her to execute it. She is, without question, a force of nature.
Imagining her against other female athletes, frankly, is becoming a little bit difficult to pull off. What is the best-case scenario for a title challenger at this point? Someone pushes her into a second round? Actually wins a round? Wins a fight?
Each of those results is progressively harder to picture.
Perhaps that’s why on message boards, Twitter and even at press conferences, talk has turned to how well Rousey would do against her male peers. Even UFC President Dana White has considered the issue.
With respect for flights of fancy, we need to stop this. Immediately.
When UFC announcer Joe Rogan says in an interview with ESPN’s Dan Le Batard, via MMA Fighting (h/t Bloody Elbow), that Rousey “might be able to beat 50 percent” of the male fighters in her weight class, he means that as a compliment. It is not.
Instead, it’s a destructive way of saying the best woman in the sport, at her best, is only as good as the worst men. Others, like UFC flyweight Ian McCall, aren’t even willing to go that far.
“Ronda’s definitely not the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world,” McCall said (h/t MMA Fighting; Bloody Elbow). “She’s the best woman on the planet. That’s cute. Cool. Well, we’re doing men things. Different. I get it, you’re really good and all, but to compare her to Jon [Jones] or Jose [Aldo] or Demetrious [Johnson] or Cain [Velasquez]…come on. Any of the champions. It’s a different world. I don’t know. It just frustrates me.”
It frustrates me, too, Ian. And not because it gives Rousey too much credit—but because it gives her too little. She’s not pretty good for a girl. She’s just plain good.
Can Ronda Rousey beat male UFC fighters? I don’t know. Nor does it matter.
In 1998, the 203rd-ranked player on the men’s tennis circuit beat both Venus and Serena Williams by lopsided scores on a single afternoon. That result doesn’t diminish their accomplishments on the court—and the same thing applies to Rousey.
Unlike tennis, this is just an academic exercise in mixed martial arts. No state athletic commission would allow it, and the UFC wouldn’t make a man vs. woman fight even if it could. Too many things could go wrong, and besides, we are all aware that physiological differences between men and women are real.
It’s unfair to compare Rousey to male fighters. It’s a battle no one wins. We created weight classes for similar reasons. No one would suggest, for example, that Anthony Pettis isn’t a worthy lightweight champion. But neither is anyone suggesting he should be next in line for a shot at heavyweight kingpin Cain Velasquez.
Size matters. That doesn’t diminish Pettis any more than Rousey‘s gender diminishes her accomplishments.
Rousey is the best female fighter the sport has ever seen. That is more than enough—if we let it be.
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