Ronda Rousey‘s days as the scariest woman in MMA are done, brought to an end by a stiff left hand and a devastating head kick by the new UFC women’s bantamweight champion, Holly Holm.
That beautifully delivered combination sparked a whirlwind of discussion about a variety of “big picture” topics. Was Rousey a hype job? Is this the beginning of the end for women’s MMA? Will this loss undo the growth the UFC has seen in 2015?
But the simplest “small picture” fact got overlooked in the days following UFC 193. Holm is now the reigning, defending, undisputed, undefeated UFC champion. With that comes the question, can anyone change this?
Bleacher Report’s crack team of punchykick analysts, Patrick Wyman and Steven Rondina, are here to watch the tape and dish on who, if anyone, can take the strap from Holm.
Steven Rondina: So we may as well start by discussing the most likely first challenger for the new champ: the old champ, Ronda Rousey. While I’m probably going to get a lot of “shill” claims thrown at me, I’m actually not feeling all that bad about Rousey’s chances in an immediate rematch. While there was plenty of “Rousey got EXPOSED!!!!” talk immediately after the fight, after rewatching it seven or eight times, I feel like Rousey actually had her moments.
She did manage to tie up Holm a couple of times, and when she got things to the ground, she had a golden opportunity to take Holm’s back (instead opting for an all-in armbar that didn’t pay off). Am I crazy in thinking Rousey would stand a pretty good chance in a rematch today? Or is this me clinging to the past and picking Anderson Silva to bounce back and retake the belt from Chris Weidman all over again?
Patrick Wyman: No, I don’t think it’s crazy to believe that Rousey would have a real shot at beating Holm in a rematch. The margin for error when fighting a finisher as dynamic as Rousey is ultra-thin, and as you pointed out, the former champion did have her cracks at Holm.
It got lost in the shock of Holm having the temerity to take down Rousey, but what prompted that reactive body-lock takedown in the first round was a crushing Rousey left hook that wobbled Holm. That wasn’t the only hard shot she landed, either.
Rousey remains a brutally hard puncher with great physicality, athleticism and the ability to find the armbar at any point on the mat. With better cardio, more efficient pressure footwork and a bit more patience, there’s no reason to think she couldn’t be competitive in a rematch, if not win outright.
Steven: Agreed there on all points. UFC President Dana White is saying right now that Holm’s first challenger will indeed be Rousey, but we, and more than a few fighters, know how little that kind of promise means. With that in mind, is there anybody else who can really challenge Holm? Looking over the top 10, I’m not really feeling it.
Cat Zingano? Rough stylistic matchup. Sarah Kaufman? Not athletic enough. Julianna Pena? Too green. Alexis Davis? Busy with more important things.
Miesha Tate and Amanda Nunes, I’d say, are the only ones who stand a ghost of a chance, largely because both of them are coming off beautiful wins where they showed improved striking to go along with their established grappling. Even so, I don’t feel like they would be able to avoid Rousey’s fate if they fought Holm.
Patrick: I agree that Tate and Nunes are the best bets to dethrone our new women’s bantamweight champion, but I disagree with your conclusion. While both Tate and Nunes would be substantial underdogs, they would both have a reasonable chance of imposing their preferred games against Holm.
Nunes is one of the few fighters in the division with the speed and physicality to compete with Holm, and she has improved the technical quality of her striking in every outing in the recent past. She hits like a truck, and if her pressure footwork is up to snuff, she could absolutely drop a knockout shot on Holm as the champion tries to stick and move.
Tate is a different animal altogether. She’s one of the most perennially underrated fighters in the entire sport, not just at women’s bantamweight, and she always seems to find a way to impose her preferred game. Transitions are her specialty, and unlike Rousey, Tate does an excellent job of covering her takedown attempts with strikes. She has sneaky power in her hands, too.
Steven: It’s hard to understate how important athleticism is in women’s MMA today. Some UFC fighters have legitimate skills and the right styles to beat Holm, but just don’t have the speed, stamina, size or strength to make use of them against ranked competition. That’s what really separates the top five from the rest of the division.
I’m really not feeling Tate, though. Maybe it’s just because I’ve watched this fight one too many times, but the way she just kept running into Rousey’s throws back at UFC 168 leads me to believe she would be more than willing to do the same with Holm’s left hand.
I think that past Rousey, the only real threat to Holm’s throne at this time is Nunes. Even that, however, works on the assumption that she will polish things up.
Patrick: Ah, yes, but the difference between Rousey and Tate is that Miesha has proven time and again that she can take the best shot of far harder punchers than Holly Holm. Even when Cat Zingano was kneeing her repeatedly in the face, Tate still didn’t go all the way out.
The fact that the new champion repeatedly stung Rousey with her punches is an anomaly in the grand scheme of her career: She’s never been a particularly vicious puncher, and as much as her mechanics did look a bit better, I think that had more to do with Rousey flinging herself face-first into Holm’s shots and her complete lack of anything resembling defensive acumen.
Tate has been consistently underestimated throughout her career. Her lack of top-end physical skills or a particularly outstanding skill set obscures the fact that she’s durable, she has great cardio and she’s utterly relentless.
What makes her so effective is her skill in transitions, both from striking to wrestling and wrestling to grappling. That’s not something Holm has had to confront yet in her career.
Your point about physicality is well taken, though, and Nunes is an elite athlete. Zingano has those physical skills as well, but if Rousey couldn’t get much going in the clinch against Holm, it’s unlikely that she’d be able to, either.
To be clear, I think Holm would be a substantial favorite against everybody except, and perhaps including, Rousey. Nunes and Tate would have the best shot of giving her a good fight, and for entirely different reasons.
Steven: It’s certainly possible that everyone (including myself) is sleeping on Tate’s chances. Her dominant performance against Jessica Eye was definitely a surprise to me, and it’s possible that she’s really going to hit her stride with the new look Xtreme Couture after an unremarkable stretch as a gym ronin.
Then again…maybe not! Dancing circles around Jessica Eye is one thing, but doing that against Holm is another. The same goes for Nunes laying the smacketh down on a Sara McMann who has really struggled to this point in her UFC career.
That said, maybe it’s time to reevaluate how I look at underdogs in MMA, particularly in women’s MMA. I completely no-sold Holm’s chances at UFC 193, and now I’m doing it here to her potential challengers all before she even defends her title! It’s nice to deal in absolutes, but women’s MMA is still changing by the day and is largely comprised of fighters who are still growing, with some doing so very quickly.
Tate last fought in July, and Nunes last fought in August. They could be substantially better fighters by winter’s end. The same, of course, goes for Holm.
In all likelihood, I’ll still side with the champ over any challenger when the time comes. I just shouldn’t be all that shocked if there’s an upset.
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