(Classic Marina, always having to one up her big shot BFF.)
If you tuned into The Ultimate Fighter at all this season (which judging by the ratings, you probably didn’t), you might have noticed the brooding brunette oft seen standing at Ronda Rousey‘s side, assisting her in training demonstrations, flipping off Miesha Tate, and other such shenanigans. Her name is Marina Shafir, and aside from being Rousey’s longtime training partner/B.F.F, she’s also an undefeated amateur MMA fighter who had secured three straight wins via first round armbar (sound familiar?).
That was of course, until last weekend, when Shafir captured the Tuff-n-Uff women’s featherweight title via a first round submission of Tabitha Patterson at the aptly titled “Future Stars of MMA.” The victory was Shafir’s second in a row to come at the 59 second mark, but in the interest of providing you with some motivation to view the fight video after the jump, we will leave the technique with which Shafir secured said victory up in the air.
As you can see, Shafir’s standup is unpolished at best, but the woman’s ground game is as overwhelming and vicious as her fellow judoka’s. Just look at how she forced that arm triangle into existence from the moment she pushed Patterson against the cage. As is always the case with Rousey’s opponents, Patterson knew what was coming, and she still couldn’t stop it.
Now that I think of it, the whole finishing sequence reminds me of the harrowing 2008 documentary, Dawn of the Dead. While trapped in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, Sir Ving Rhames declares that ”There are things worse than death, and one of them is sitting here waiting to die.” That’s how I imagine what it must be like to fight Rousey, and to a lesser extent, Shafir. You sign up for the fight, clinging to the hope that you will somehow achieve the impossible, yet ultimately knowing that it can only end in you wiping your ass with the other hand. That, my friends, is worse than death.