In the wake of her second straight lopsided defeat, Ronda Rousey left the Octagon with an uncertain fighting future. With both Hollywood and Madison Avenue beckoning, the prospect of suffering the bumps, bruises and blows of mixed martial arts must seem less appealing by the day.
At age 29, Rousey may be done as a competitive athlete, which means its time to start wrestling with her legacy.
From a historical standpoint, it is beyond reproach. Her intriguing personal history, brash personality, explosive performances and looks made her a star, drawing the eye of the UFC brass and shattering the UFC’s gender barrier. In time, she helped drag three divisions along with her into the spotlight.
Her professional athletic resume was flawless until things fell apart, and that’s where we stand now, trying to piece together where she belongs in the grand scheme of the sport.
Joining me to discuss Rousey is Bleacher Report MMA Senior Columnist Josh Gross.
Mike Chiappetta: In the few short days since Rousey’s defeat, I’ve heard several variations of the question of how good Rousey actually was. In our sport, that’s a relatively normal query coming on the heels of a losing streak. It’s difficult to fairly and accurately judge athletes on short bursts of time. With Rousey, that’s mostly what we had until Holly Holm exposed a big problem. Nunes then showed it had still not been addressed.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can conclude she was not nearly as well-rounded as she needed to be. But to say she was “not that good”? That’s too much revisionist history. We don’t get to erase her 12 fights of near-complete dominance that came before it.
For four years, she buzzsawed everyone that stood before her. Miesha Tate, Sarah Kaufman, Cat Zingano—all are decorated and capable opponents, and Rousey didn’t just beat them; she crushed them soundly.
But as we see in the world of sports, excellence is like a mountaintop. It gives everyone else something to strive for. Rousey became the benchmark, and the rest of the division started raising their own performances to meet and exceed her.
It took a great striker (Holm) with a brilliant tactical team (Jackson-Winkeljohn) behind her to put Rousey out of her comfort zone and force her to compete in a fight that emphasized her weaknesses.
Rousey has little head movement, does not respond well to getting hit and tends to be robotic in her standup. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising given her limited history in MMA. Despite her championships in Strikeforce and the UFC, she’s only been an active pro for five years. In such a multi-textured discipline, there’s so much to learn, and she just hasn’t gotten there in the striking department. That doomed her against fluid and confident strikers.
Sure, we can revise our judgements on her, but the pendulum should not swing completely in the opposite direction.
Josh, is any of the takedown of her legacy warranted?
Josh Gross: Has there been a more severe fall from sporting greatness than “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey? I don’t think so. So, yes, in several ways, takedowns of her legacy are fair game. Some aren’t, though.
Some of the basis for the reaction to her collapse is moored to the fact that Rousey choked hard, and the media, due largely to her celebrity and needle-moving ability, cared enough to bring it up.
Mike, you mentioned that Rousey became the benchmark for excellence in her division. There’s a great case to make that the perception of her success pushed well past that. There was winning or sucking, and Rousey was seen as the most dynamic victor of them all in the UFC. Add attitude, a dangerous and exciting occupation plus other intangibles, and Rousey quickly became a major sports personality.
Rousey crushed women in the Octagon in a matter of seconds, and pundits mentioned her among her male peers on pound-for-pound lists. Remember that prominent voices like Joe Rogan labeled her a once-in-human history kind of athlete. She was discussed in a manner and at a level female athletes rarely experienced in the U.S.
Rousey set the standard by which to judge her (which many people have). She was the one with a thousand setups for an armbar no one could stop. She was the one who created the aura opponents bought into (until they didn’t). Then just over a year ago, we were left to wonder why the world had turned on her after Holm. The animus she experienced was amplified by the starkness between what people thought they knew of Rousey and how she looked falling on her face.
Much of the criticism and vile spewed about Rousey following the Holm loss, and what’s come so far after Nunes, is what happens when stunning failure collides with a reputation for dominance in the age of social media. People are haters, and Rousey was a ripe target.
I’m not saying that’s what ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt did when he pondered whether Rousey, based on her previous two efforts, had been exposed as a fraud. In fact, Van Pelt and ESPN rightly treated Rousey like a star athlete who badly embarrassed herself while competing. Post-Nunes, from social media dens to venues like SportsCenter, questions regarding whether she was ever that materialized. I heard them too, Mike. Wrapping your head around Rousey going from a ninja assassin to the equivalent of a tortoise turned on its shell takes some work. It’s like trying to unwind the mortgage-backed security bubble. Everything looked great, you know, before it didn’t.
After that helpless performance Friday night, hard questions about Rousey’s ability are warranted. So let’s get forensic and connect some dots. We agree Ronda Rousey isn’t some fraud, but the fact remains she looked overwhelmed.
How does that happen, and should that answer change anything about the way we regard stud fighters in the future?
Mike: The simplest explanation is that this hole in her game always existed and no one could anticipate just how far it could be ripped open until far too late. For most of her career, her team had her believing in every facet of her game, and the results of her matches worked as confirmation bias.
If that’s true, her complete dismantling at the hands of Holm had to be as devastating psychologically as it was physically. And once those doubts creep in, it’s a long way back to the top.
Certainly, the major part of the blame belongs to Rousey, who stuck with a striking coach that is largely seen as over his head in major MMA to the point that Rousey’s own mother, Dr. AnnMaria DeMars, once publicly slammed him while pleading with her daughter to find a new mentor. It’s quite easy to wonder how Rousey would have evolved under the tutelage of an accomplished lead coach such as Tristar’s Firas Zahabi, Kings MMA’s Rafael Cordeiro or AMC Pankration’s Matt Hume.
The thing about winning without fail as she did up until November 2015 is that it must become awfully easy to become content in keeping the status quo. If certain training drills and techniques got you to the top, why would you suddenly believe the same things couldn’t keep you there? The focus is more likely on maintaining rather than innovating.
Meanwhile, in gyms across the world, those gunning for the belt have the exact opposite approach. They have seen what doesn’t work, have witnessed flashes of vulnerability and can focus on creating new approaches.
On Friday night, we saw two different examples of how the onion unpeels so unpredictably in MMA. Because of her throws and ground game, Rousey successfully hid her striking deficiencies for so long that they became mostly invisible until they weren’t. Meanwhile, on the biggest stage of his life, Cody Garbrandt showed a patient, mature and layered striking game that had never before been witnessed.
It’s a crazy thing, this sport, and these short windows of competition will always force us to draw conclusions that may not be entirely accurate. Only time can offer the context we’re often trying to provide. I don’t think there’s any way to change this other than trying to temper our judgments in the future, but that’s easier said than done. It’s hard not to get excited about something so impressive as early Rousey or present-day Garbrandt.
We watch the sport for those kinds of dominant displays. If we suddenly devalue these kinds of early results, do we take away from our own enjoyment of the sport? Is there some other way we should evaluate breakthrough talents, or do we have to be content in retroactively assessing “once in human history” athletes that turn out to be quite human after all?
Josh: I don’t think we need to devalue fighters’ early accomplishments or be any less excited by their potential, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if we—the media—spoke about fighters with a bit more skepticism. Some analysts saw canaries in Rousey’s coal mine.
B/R’s Patrick Wyman spoke pre-Holm about how Rousey’s footwork was off, which affected her punches and an assortment of other skills. For those of us (like me) who were willing to look past technical deficiencies with her strikes—this is MMA, and many great fighters have gotten away with being sloppy—Rousey went ahead and blasted Bethe Correia in 34 seconds.
Even her doubters had to pause and say, well, wow, you can’t grapple with this woman, and if she wants, she can hunt an opponent down and stop them on the feet.
Rousey’s hard fall is a byproduct of several things that she may beat herself up about in later life. First, she has taken the unusual tact of isolating herself in camp. As you mentioned, Rousey’s mother (the world champion judoka who, let’s be real, was Rousey’s trainer from the start) has been extremely critical of Edmond Tarverdyan. Criticism tends to be ignored until something happens that confirms what critics said. Then it’s about learning. There’s no losing, right? Just learning? Well, Rousey seemingly didn’t do much learning in the 13 months between Holm and Nunes, so she deserves to be hammered for that. Rather than building that wall, she would have been better served to tear it down and work with larger, successful fight teams.
Talk of tactics and trainers may be passe at this stage because as you wrote, Mike, Rousey’s dismantling was just as much about psychological shortcomings as physical ones. When she realized she wasn’t as great as she thought she was, the whole thing came tumbling down.
So, can Rousey be successful (even dominant) in MMA again if she makes adjustments?
She can’t spend full fight camps focused on boxing. She can’t walk out from her corner at the start of a fight thinking about striking first. Rousey’s best athleticism manifests when she grapples. Everything about the way she moves screams grappler. Yet two years ago, I heard discontent from people close to Rousey that she had gotten away from training judo and grappling had been relegated to a tool in the bag rather than the first bludgeon. This is a tactical decision sold by a trainer and bought by a fighter that could be rectified had the damage not been so bad.
Mike: And I guess that’s the ultimate tragedy and result, that she was indeed a wonderful talent who got stunning results until she was led (or allowed herself to be led) astray.
In retrospect, maybe what we saw was both how good she was and how good she could be. For a time, Rousey reached the pinnacle and was as dominant a champion as we had. No one can take that part of her history away from her. But when it came time to adapt to the adjustments that opponents made, there was no ability to do so. That’s part of her history, too.
Her contributions to the fight game should always be recognized, but the narrative of Rousey as an unbeatable fighter have been destroyed, and for good reason. Still, the retroactive analysis has strayed too far from what the evidence shows us. Rousey was great for a short burst of time, and then everything caught up to her, and she mostly fell apart.
Unless there is a third act to her fight story, that is where things will end. As fight stories go, that’s hardly a tragedy. Champion in Strikeforce, champion in UFC, Queen of the Armbars, gender-barrier breaker. All in all, that’s a pretty strong legacy, both earned and deserved.
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