At last night’s ESPY’s, Rousey took home the award for “Best Fighter” — beating out a field that included Mayweather, Terence Crawford, and Donald Cerrone — as well as the “Best Female Athlete” award. While discussing her big win on the red carpet, Rousey used the opportunity to eviscerate the pound-for-pound boxing king for his history of domestic…let’s call them “issues.”
“I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once,” Rousey said. “I’d like to see him pretend to not know who I am now.”
In other ESPY news, Caitlyn Jenner was bestowed with the Arthur Ashe Award for courage, and everyone was too busy talking about how she looked/sounded to consider whether or not it might be a bit presumptuous to give a courage award to someone who recklessly killed a woman in a car crash earlier this year. Yay Hollywood.
At last night’s ESPY’s, Rousey took home the award for “Best Fighter” — beating out a field that included Mayweather, Terence Crawford, and Donald Cerrone — as well as the “Best Female Athlete” award. While discussing her big win on the red carpet, Rousey used the opportunity to eviscerate the pound-for-pound boxing king for his history of domestic…let’s call them “issues.”
“I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once,” Rousey said. “I’d like to see him pretend to not know who I am now.”
In other ESPY news, Caitlyn Jenner was bestowed with the Arthur Ashe Award for courage, and everyone was too busy talking about how she looked/sounded to consider whether or not it might be a bit presumptuous to give a courage award to someone who recklessly killed a woman in a car crash earlier this year. Yay Hollywood.
(Ronda could not be reached for comment, as she is currently in a state of cat-like readiness. / Photo via Getty)
Last night in Los Angeles, UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey became the first MMA fighter to win an ESPY Award, when she claimed “Best Female Athlete” honors at ESPN’s 22nd annual sports awards ceremony. Rousey was nominated alongside basketball players Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart, and Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin, none of whom have ever KO’d a woman in 16 seconds. Rousey was also nominated in the “Best Fighter” category, along with UFC light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones, but the category was won for the fifth time by Floyd Mayweather.
Sure, the ESPY’s are just a fan-voted* popularity contest, but Rousey’s win is kind of a big deal. Since 2007, various UFC stars (including Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, Quinton Jackson, and Randy Couture) have been nominated for Best Fighter, but have lost every single time to Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao. UFC fights have popped up twice in the “Best Upset” category as well — Frankie Edgar’s UFC 112 defeat of BJ Penn in 2010, and Chris Weidman’s UFC 162 KO of Anderson Silva, which was nominated this year — but mixed martial arts has always walked away empty handed.
It’ll be a while before an MMA champion can draw more votes than the biggest star in boxing. Maybe that will never happen. But if Ronda Rousey is the most compelling, dominant, and popular female athlete in sports right now, that’s great publicity for the sport as a whole. So let’s enjoy it before Rousey buzzes off to Hollywood full time to become an unholy hybrid of Milla Jovovich and The Rock.
(Ronda could not be reached for comment, as she is currently in a state of cat-like readiness. / Photo via Getty)
Last night in Los Angeles, UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey became the first MMA fighter to win an ESPY Award, when she claimed “Best Female Athlete” honors at ESPN’s 22nd annual sports awards ceremony. Rousey was nominated alongside basketball players Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart, and Olympic skier Mikaela Shiffrin, none of whom have ever KO’d a woman in 16 seconds. Rousey was also nominated in the “Best Fighter” category, along with UFC light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones, but the category was won for the fifth time by Floyd Mayweather.
Sure, the ESPY’s are just a fan-voted* popularity contest, but Rousey’s win is kind of a big deal. Since 2007, various UFC stars (including Georges St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, Quinton Jackson, and Randy Couture) have been nominated for Best Fighter, but have lost every single time to Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao. UFC fights have popped up twice in the “Best Upset” category as well — Frankie Edgar’s UFC 112 defeat of BJ Penn in 2010, and Chris Weidman’s UFC 162 KO of Anderson Silva, which was nominated this year — but mixed martial arts has always walked away empty handed.
It’ll be a while before an MMA champion can draw more votes than the biggest star in boxing. Maybe that will never happen. But if Ronda Rousey is the most compelling, dominant, and popular female athlete in sports right now, that’s great publicity for the sport as a whole. So let’s enjoy it before Rousey buzzes off to Hollywood full time to become an unholy hybrid of Milla Jovovich and The Rock.
We should probably feel sad about the fact that we live in a country where people get more passionate about voting for the winner of a reality show than they do for voting for their school board representatives. Or that many of you have probably quoted “the Founding Fathers™” inaccurately in a typo-ridden Facebook rant at some point in your lives. Or that many of you don’t know when this year’s presidential election is, yet have already voted for the awards we’re about to shamelessly plug.
But if we did that, then we might miss out on one of these fighters winning an ESPY. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Didn’t think so.
We’re about to win at IRONY! TOP SCORE!!!
We should probably feel sad about the fact that we live in a country where people get more passionate about voting for the winner of a reality show than they do for voting for their school board representatives. Or that many of you have probably quoted “the Founding Fathers™” inaccurately in a typo-ridden Facebook rant at some point in your lives. Or that many of you don’t know when this year’s presidential election is, yet have already voted for the awards we’re about to shamelessly plug.
But if we did that, then we might miss out on one of these fighters winning an ESPY. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Didn’t think so.
Yesterday, voting opened for this year’s ESPY Awards, which will air live on ESPN on July 11 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. While MMA fighters may not be eligible for “Male/Female Athlete of the Year” (Ronda Rousey is not impressed), our sport finds itself represented in two categories.
Obviously, “Best Fighter” has UFC athletes Anderson Silva and Jon Jones up for nomination, along with boxing’s Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Andre Ward. An MMA fighter has never won “Best Fighter” since the category’s inception (?!), but with Floyd Mayweather being broken by jail and Anderson Silva fighting two days before the voting ends, this year may very well give us an MMA fighter winning this category, like God intended.
Also of note, Edson Barboza’s third-round wheel kick knockout of Terry Etim at UFC 142 is up for “Best Play of the Year”. Voting in this category is 16 seed tournament-style, with the first eight matchups having a voting period ending on Tuesday. The winners advance to an Elite Eight round from July 3-9, and voters will have all of July 9th to pick the winner from the final four plays to advance.
This round, Barboza’s wheel kick KO is matched up against a freaking golf highlight. We can’t possibly let ourselves lose to golf, can we? Then click here to vote for Edson Barboza, and click here to vote for the other categories, including “Best Fighter”. Go out and make your voices heard!
UFC champions Georges St-Pierre and Frankie Edgar came up short at the ESPYs on Wednesday night.
The annual awards ceremony held by the ESPN cable network, now in its 18th year, took place at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles and aired live on ESPN. T…
The annual awards ceremony held by the ESPN cable network, now in its 18th year, took place at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles and aired live on ESPN. The broadcast was hosted by “Saturday Night Live” performer and writer Seth Meyers. And once again, the awards show coincided with the day after the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, one of the few “dead days” of the year in major sports.
St-Pierre, the UFC’s welterweight champion, was nominated for Best Fighter. Edgar was up for Best Upset for his lightweight title win over BJ Penn at UFC 112 in April.
UFC champions