Ten women have tried; 10 women have failed. Ronda Rousey is, with very little doubt, the best female fighter on the planet.
All doubt would cease to exist entirely if not for, you know, her.
If she didn’t exist, Rousey‘s eight armbars and two TKO victories would be plenty of reason to permanently carve her name in the record books under “best ever.”
No, I’m not talking about Cat Zingano. She’s all but booked her New Year’s weekend ticket to Las Vegas for her UFC 182 bout with the champion, but she may as well not pay for the extra carry-on now since she won’t be bringing back 20 pounds of UFC gold with her. Zingano‘s had a knack for starting slow inside of the Octagon; Rousey‘s had a knack for starting fast. Like, “you’ve maybe got three minutes so show me what you’ve got” fast.
Then there’s Holly Holm. Should she get past the sacrificial lamb at UFC 181 in December, she’s bound to earn a title shot with the queen. But Rousey‘s not dumb; she’ll have no part of Holm‘s strikes. And let’s be real, if Rousey wants no part of the standup, she’ll have no part of the standup. So, no, we’re not talking about Holm here, either.
It also doesn’t look like Gina Carano’s ready to trade her silver-screen paychecks to start doing her own stunts in the UFC. Even if Dana White did manage to add enough zeros to Carano’s big payday, there’s no reason to assume she’d be competitive after a five- or six-year absence from fighting.
All right, let’s be honest here, you probably already guessed that I was talking about Cris “Cyborg” Justino. Her invincible aura may have come undone after she dropped her first bout—kickboxing or MMA—in almost 10 years, but there’s still a big portion of the MMA community that wants to see her step into the cage with the UFC superstar.
Cyborg once claimed that she was physically unable to make the cut to 135 pounds, meaning a bout with Rousey would only ever be able to take place outside of the bantamweight confines. But the champion took a firm stance, essentially forcing Cyborg to make the cut to 135 or lose hope of any potential fight for her crown.
“I really wanna fight Ronda,” she said on The MMA Hour in August 2012 “I really want to. She says bad things about me. I never say bad things about my opponent. I want to do my best in the octagon, and if she says she wants to fight me, she can come to my weight or at 140.”
With or without Cyborg, Rousey‘s career will continue to flourish.
That doesn’t mean we, including the UFC, don’t want to see the two take center stage of the Octagon before it’s all said and done. It’d be a historic payday for both women and we’d all be happy to provide them our hard-earned dollars.
But these two-year-old talks are growing tired now. With Rousey‘s dominance spread all across the UFC and only a few noteworthy opponents left for her to dispose of, Cyborg’s doing everything she can to make sure they don’t become three-year-old talks.
Call it a change of heart, call it an athletic compromise. It doesn’t matter, really; all we know is Cyborg won’t just stand around while Rousey batters her name outside the cage. Rousey told Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole:
I’ve said before, I don’t care if she’s injecting horse semen into her eyeballs, I’ll fight her, but that’s just my personal decision. But I can’t make a decision for the whole division. I can’t say it’s the right thing. This girl has been on steroids for so long and [has been] injecting herself for so long that she’s not even a woman anymore. She’s an ‘it.’ It’s not good for the women’s division. It’s not good at all.
Cyborg’s impending move down to bantamweight and the UFC’s purchasing of her employer should be reason to get excited of the hypothetical blockbuster bout that could be. For all we know, we may just be six months away from watching the greatest women’s MMA bout that could ever be.
Kristian Ibarra is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report. He also serves as the sports editor at San Diego State University’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Aztec. Follow him on Twitter at @Kristian_Ibarra for all things MMA.
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