(Props: mmasavvy)
As a competitive judoka, Cali-bred Ronda Rousey earned a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics and a gold medal at the 2007 Pan Am Games. As a budding MMA fighter, she has won all five of her fights (2 pro, 3 amateur) by submission, all in less than a minute. Now training with Team Hayastan in Santa Monica, Rousey makes her Strikeforce debut tomorrow night at Strikeforce Challengers: Gurgel vs. Duarte in Las Vegas, where she’ll face Sarah D’Alelio. So yeah, it’s time for you to start paying attention to this woman.
As she explains in the above video, women’s MMA needs another visible competitor to fill the vacuum left by Gina Carano. (Uh, hello?) Even though people haven’t seen her standup yet, she feels she’s better than D’Alelio on the feet, and if their fight lasts more than a minute, hey, that’s cool too. Is another women’s MMA star about to be born? After the jump, a glimpse of the kind of ferocious ground-work that Ronda could be showing off tomorrow…
(Ronda Rousey vs. Taylor Stratford, 1/7/11)