(Hey, I keep tons of random trash in *my* car too! SOUL MATES. / Photo via @RondaRousey)
On March 3rd, red-hot women’s MMA prospect Ronda Rousey will drop to 135 pounds for the first time to challenge Miesha Tate for her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title. Rousey’s pro MMA career isn’t even a year old yet, and she’s already facing the world’s top-ranked 135’er, a woman who holds victories over such big names as Marloes Coenen and Zoila Gurgel.
And according to oddsmakers, Miesha Tate is dead meat.
Props to MiddleEasy for alerting us to the current betting odds for next month’s Tate vs. Rousey showdown in Columbus, Ohio. Due to her string of armbar victories within the first minute of her fights, Ronda Rousey is as high as a -375 favorite in the matchup, with Tate slated as a +275 ‘dog. That, my friends, is insane.
(Hey, I keep tons of random trash in *my* car too! SOUL MATES. / Photo via @RondaRousey)
On March 3rd, red-hot women’s MMA prospect Ronda Rousey will drop to 135 pounds for the first time to challenge Miesha Tate for her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title. Rousey’s pro MMA career isn’t even a year old yet, and she’s already facing the world’s top-ranked 135′er, a woman who holds victories over such big names as Marloes Coenen and Zoila Gurgel.
And according to oddsmakers, Miesha Tate is dead meat.
Props to MiddleEasy for alerting us to the current betting odds for next month’s Tate vs. Rousey showdown in Columbus, Ohio. Due to her string of armbar victories within the first minute of her fights, Ronda Rousey is as high as a -375 favorite in the matchup, with Tate slated as a +275 ‘dog. That, my friends, is insane.
Should Rousey be the favorite here at all? It’s hard to say. Miesha Tate represents such an extraordinary leap in competition level for Rousey, that it’s nearly impossible to predict how their fight will play out. This will be the match that determines if Ronda is overhyped or the real deal. And yet, the oddsmakers have already decided that this is Ronda’s fight to lose.
With a pairing this volatile, we wouldn’t actually recommend that you bet money on this fight. But if you’re a Miesha fan, you might want to jump on this line early.
Semi-related: Strikeforce: Tate vs. Rousey is scheduled to take place the same day as UFC on FX 2. For the last time, Zuffa — you own Strikeforce now, so you can stop trying to bury them with counter-programming.
Filed under: StrikeforceNews that Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos tested positive for steroids following her last Strikeforce 145-pound title defense provoked a wide range of responses last week, but shock wasn’t one of them. Some reacted with bitter disappo…
News that Cristiane “Cyborg” Santostested positive for steroids following her last Strikeforce 145-pound title defense provoked a wide range of responses last week, but shock wasn’t one of them. Some reacted with bitter disappointment, others with cynical detachment, but no one who’s ever so much as seen a picture of the Brazilian fighter can say that they haven’t at least considered the possibility that her biceps might have gotten that way via some not-so-natural processes.
For as long as she’s been in the spotlight, that’s kind of been Santos’ thing. She’s the woman with the muscles, the female fighter who looks every bit as terrifying as she fights. The positive steroid test just confirmed what most fans already suspected: there’s a reason you don’t see more women like “Cyborg” running around.
Maybe that’s what’s so disappointing about this whole story. It just seems so obvious. It reminds us once again that the MMA world isn’t some magical, mystical place. Instead, it’s just like the rest of the world. When you suspect someone is a cheater, you eventually find out that you were right. Then you wonder why you ever gave them the benefit of the doubt to begin with.
That’s the real problem for Santos here. When Tim Sylvia popped positive and explained that he just wanted to look good with his shirt off, you could believe him. You took one look at his soggy, pasty torso and thought, yeah, if I had to go topless on TV I might be tempted to do something about that too.
But because Santos has long been known as the heavily muscled, über-aggressive women’s champ, one failed drug test provides an all-too convenient explanation for her exceptionalism and, rightly or wrongly, taints everything she’s ever done. It makes it seem as if this is merely the first time she’s been caught, but far from the first time she’s ever used.
Not that she’s admitted to pumping herself up with stanozolol, of course. Instead she blamed it on an unnamed “dietary supplement” and copped to nothing more serious than a failure to fully investigate the banned substances list. If she were Roy Nelson, that explanation might fly. But Cyborg is Cyborg. When you look like she does, even the mere hint of guilt is more than enough to convict you in the court of public opinion.
Naturally, people will wonder what this means for the future of the women’s division. They wonder the same thing whenever anything interesting happens to a female fighter, and sometimes even when nothing happens at all. For now, Santos has been stripped of the title and the 145-pound division put on hold. And honestly? That’s probably a good thing.
For the past couple years, Santos wasn’t just the champ in that division — she was the division. How can you tell? For starters, it’s a division that might as well not exist while she’s suspended, as UFC president Dana White more or less admitted. Think about it: how many times have you watched a women’s 145-pound bout in Strikeforce that wasn’t a title fight? There aren’t enough women at that weight to have a real division. It’s just Santos beating up one fresh victim after another, many of whom have been cajoled into gaining weight just to get their faces smashed on TV.
The real action in the women’s division is at 135 pounds. Between Miesha Tate, Ronda Rousey, Sarah Kaufman, and Marloes Coenen (among others), there’s a wealth of existing talent with more coming up all the time. Santos might have had a certain circus appeal — again, probably for the very same reasons she now finds herself suspended — but the competition is in the 135-pound class, where the fighters sport credible physiques and the interest isn’t limited to one dominant champ.
White loves to brag that he never gave in to the siren’s song of freak show fights, even when his company was struggling. And while matching Santos up against one undersized opponent after another isn’t exactly a freak show, neither is it indicative of a genuine interest in women’s MMA. It’s a sideshow. It’s the scary lady with the muscles against whichever brave soul would take the fight. Now that that option has been eliminated, at least for the time being, White and his crew would be smart to move the spotlight further down the scale, where there’s an actual division taking shape.
Santos’ current predicament is still disappointing, even if it’s not surprising, but it doesn’t have to be a negative for MMA. If the absence of Santos means a bigger share of the pie for the women who are (hopefully) competing clean against opponents their own size, it might just be the best thing that could have happened.
And who knows, maybe Santos can use the forced vacation time to slim down and join her colleagues at a lower weight class. Tossing that “dietary supplement” in the trash might be a good way to start.
With their women’s Featherweight division in shambles, Strikeforce will look to further develop the scene at Bantamweight with a pairing of Sarah Kaufman and Alexis Davis. Kaufman formerly held Strikeforce’s 135lb strap–her only loss came in a title defense against Marloes Coenen back in October of 2010. Since that time she’s rattled off wins over Megumi Yabushita and Liz Carmouche. Davis is on a three-fight streak, picking up her last two wins over Julie Kedzie and Amanda Nunes under the Strikeforce banner. Given the caliber of competitors and their placement on this card, it’s safe to assume that the winner of this fight could go on to challenge the victor of the Tate-Rousey bout.
…and fillilng out nicely, we must say. (Pic: StandThemUp.org)
With their women’s Featherweight division in shambles, Strikeforce will look to further develop the scene at Bantamweight with a pairing of Sarah Kaufman and Alexis Davis. Kaufman formerly held Strikeforce’s 135lb strap–her only loss came in a title defense against Marloes Coenen back in October of 2010. Since that time she’s rattled off wins over Megumi Yabushita and Liz Carmouche. Davis is on a three-fight streak, picking up her last two wins over Julie Kedzie and Amanda Nunes under the Strikeforce banner. Given the caliber of competitors and their placement on this card, it’s safe to assume that the winner of this fight could go on to challenge the victor of the Tate-Rousey bout.
Another former Strikeforce champion, Josh Thomson, will square off against former title contender KJ Noons in a lightweight clash. This will be Thomson’s first bout in fifteen months; he last met Tatsuya Kawajir on the K1-Dynamite!! Power of Courage 2010 card in a fight he lost via decision. Noons recently picked up his first win in three fights with a decision victory over Billy Evangelista.
In a bout that will likely round out the main card of this event, noted scalephobePaul Daley will look to continue his winning ways against Kazuo Misaki. Though “Semtex” dropped his last two fights in the Strikeforce organization, he’s since picked up two decision wins overseas in Bamma. Misaki has similarly rebounded from a two-fight skid with a pair of TKO victories. This will be his first contest back in Strikeforce since a 2008 victory over Joe Riggs.
God damn you, ReX13. His running gag this week inspired us to revive an old, dead CagePotato feature, in which we take a moment to recognize some of your efforts in the comments section. Will we forget about this by next Friday? Maybe. Maybe not. All we have is this moment. And now, the eight greatest comments of the week…
ReX13 on “Report: Miesha Tate to Defend Strikeforce Title Against Ronda Rousey on March 3rd” [selected highlights]:
– “If you weren’t pretty, it wouldn’t matter what you said or didn’t say. That’s why you’re getting this attention.” – Miesha Tate
– “Man, Stalin was a real asshole, killing his own people like that.” – Pol Pot
– “Wow, that Bachmann chick is stuck on turbo-crazy. The only reason people are giving her the time of day is because she’s a relatively attractive woman in the Republican party. Does she hear the words that are coming out of her mouth?” – Sarah Palin
– “Goddammit, I’ve spent fifteen years in this neighborhood trying to increase property vaules, and a whole fucking passel of kettles just moved in next door. With their hippity hop music and Tyler Perry movies…..we better get a dog, honey.” – Pot
– “Bobby Flay is kinda a douche, you guys.” – Guy Fieri
– “The Duggars should stop having children. Can they even handle the children they already have?” – Nadya “Octomom” Suleman
– “That Octomom is such an attention whore.” – Kate Gosselin
– “Fuck you, bitch.” – Nadya Suleman
God damn you, ReX13. His running gag this week inspired us to revive an old, dead CagePotato feature, in which we take a moment to recognize some of your efforts in the comments section. Will we forget about this by next Friday? Maybe. Maybe not. All we have is this moment. And now, the eight greatest comments of the week…
ReX13 on “Report: Miesha Tate to Defend Strikeforce Title Against Ronda Rousey on March 3rd” [selected highlights]:
– “If you weren’t pretty, it wouldn’t matter what you said or didn’t say. That’s why you’re getting this attention.” – Miesha Tate
– “Man, Stalin was a real asshole, killing his own people like that.” – Pol Pot
– “Wow, that Bachmann chick is stuck on turbo-crazy. The only reason people are giving her the time of day is because she’s a relatively attractive woman in the Republican party. Does she hear the words that are coming out of her mouth?” – Sarah Palin
– “Goddammit, I’ve spent fifteen years in this neighborhood trying to increase property vaules, and a whole fucking passel of kettles just moved in next door. With their hippity hop music and Tyler Perry movies…..we better get a dog, honey.” – Pot
– “Bobby Flay is kinda a douche, you guys.” – Guy Fieri
– “The Duggars should stop having children. Can they even handle the children they already have?” – Nadya “Octomom” Suleman
– “That Octomom is such an attention whore.” – Kate Gosselin
– “Fuck you, bitch.” – Nadya Suleman
Old_Bald_and_Irish on “Video of the Day: Ronda Rousey Trains Like A Boss“:
Yeah…I’d drop my balls on her too.
[Ed. note: Welcome back, old friend! This site has sucked since you left and XENOPHON took over!]
Honorable mention: A Fistful of Doll Hairs on “Tito Ortiz Guests on Friday Night’s Episode of CSI: NY With an Obviously Cracked Skull“:
He would be a fool not to learn the acting trade from his wife. Timing, dialoge, hitting your mark, getting in front of the money shot…etc. She is a filth of knowledge.
[Ed. note: Obviously he means “fountain,” not “filth.” I don’t know know if that was an auto-correct fail, a Freudian slip, or intentional joke-writing, but either way it made me LOL.]
Sarah Kaufman saw the internet reports of a Miesha Tate–Ronda Rousey title at about the same time the rest of the MMA world did. She wasn’t terribly surprised, she told MMA Fighting on Thursday, but neither was she particularly pleased.
“I think it’s terrible news,” the former Strikeforce 135-pound women’s champ said, and you can probably guess why.
“I put in my time and, being the former champ and having had two fights since the only loss of my career, I’ve definitely earned the right to fight Miesha Tate and fight for the 135-pound title with Strikeforce,” Kaufman explained. “Then there’s Ronda, who’s only been fighting for a year. Granted, she has her judo experience, but she hasn’t fought anyone of a high caliber. She’s fought at 145 pounds — hasn’t even competed at 135 pounds at all — and for her to be given the opportunity to fight for the title, it’s pretty ridiculous.”
The good news, if there is any for Kaufman, is that the fight is not yet official. Though first reported by MMA Weekly on Wednesday evening, both Tate — the current 135-pound women’s champ — and the unbeaten Rousey took to their Twitters to explain that the rumored March 3 title fight wasn’t yet signed. Kaufman said she was still holding out hope that her phone might ring with a fight offer before Rousey’s does, but noted that “usually when rumors happen it’s for a reason.”
The way Kaufman sees it, if Rousey has earned herself a title shot in any division it’s the 145-pound class, where most of her professional bouts have taken place. That Rousey is angling for a shot at Tate rather than at Strikeforce 145-pound champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos can only mean one thing, Kaufman said.
“She’s scared to fight Cyborg, for sure, and understandably. Cyborg is a formidable fighter. But if you’re saying you want a title, it shouldn’t matter whether it’s at 145 [pounds] or 135 [pounds]. Now she’s backpedaling and saying, ‘Oh, I want Cyborg to come to 135.’ Or maybe she’ll do it as a catchweight. Or maybe in four or five fights. She’s pretty much just pushing the fight off, clearly running from it.”
“It’s frustrating to see,” Kaufman said. “Gina [Carano] is a prime example, but she didn’t push her own looks. Everyone else pushed her looks, and she fought. She had good fights that she looked impressive in. Miesha’s been a little bit the same. She’s definitely pushed her looks and marketed herself in that manner, but she’s also put her time in and worked her way up in the fighting game. Ronda’s just the opposite. She’s had a couple impressive wins, and really fast, and then just told people, ‘I’m pretty so I deserve it.'”
While there’s no official word on whether Rousey will get the next shot at Tate, all signs seem to be pointing in that direction, and even Kaufman seems resigned to it. She might have nearly four times as many fights as Rousey, and five years more experience in MMA, but with the fickle nature of the women’s division she knows that doesn’t guarantee her a title shot. What she’s left wondering is, what will?
“I’ve been pushing for the Miesha fight since I fought her,” said Kaufman. “That’s all I can do, is get in interviews and say what I think, which is that I deserve the fight. Maybe that’s not what they want to hear. They want to hear, ‘I’m the prettiest and you can market me and sell me to guys.’ That’s not my thing, and I won’t do that. I’ll present myself as an athlete and be feminine in my own way without being over the top.”
Sarah Kaufman saw the internet reports of a Miesha Tate–Ronda Rousey title at about the same time the rest of the MMA world did. She wasn’t terribly surprised, she told MMA Fighting on Thursday, but neither was she particularly pleased.
“I think it’s terrible news,” the former Strikeforce 135-pound women’s champ said, and you can probably guess why.
“I put in my time and, being the former champ and having had two fights since the only loss of my career, I’ve definitely earned the right to fight Miesha Tate and fight for the 135-pound title with Strikeforce,” Kaufman explained. “Then there’s Ronda, who’s only been fighting for a year. Granted, she has her judo experience, but she hasn’t fought anyone of a high caliber. She’s fought at 145 pounds — hasn’t even competed at 135 pounds at all — and for her to be given the opportunity to fight for the title, it’s pretty ridiculous.”
The good news, if there is any for Kaufman, is that the fight is not yet official. Though first reported by MMA Weekly on Wednesday evening, both Tate — the current 135-pound women’s champ — and the unbeaten Rousey took to their Twitters to explain that the rumored March 3 title fight wasn’t yet signed. Kaufman said she was still holding out hope that her phone might ring with a fight offer before Rousey’s does, but noted that “usually when rumors happen it’s for a reason.”
The way Kaufman sees it, if Rousey has earned herself a title shot in any division it’s the 145-pound class, where most of her professional bouts have taken place. That Rousey is angling for a shot at Tate rather than at Strikeforce 145-pound champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos can only mean one thing, Kaufman said.
“She’s scared to fight Cyborg, for sure, and understandably. Cyborg is a formidable fighter. But if you’re saying you want a title, it shouldn’t matter whether it’s at 145 [pounds] or 135 [pounds]. Now she’s backpedaling and saying, ‘Oh, I want Cyborg to come to 135.’ Or maybe she’ll do it as a catchweight. Or maybe in four or five fights. She’s pretty much just pushing the fight off, clearly running from it.”
“It’s frustrating to see,” Kaufman said. “Gina [Carano] is a prime example, but she didn’t push her own looks. Everyone else pushed her looks, and she fought. She had good fights that she looked impressive in. Miesha’s been a little bit the same. She’s definitely pushed her looks and marketed herself in that manner, but she’s also put her time in and worked her way up in the fighting game. Ronda’s just the opposite. She’s had a couple impressive wins, and really fast, and then just told people, ‘I’m pretty so I deserve it.'”
While there’s no official word on whether Rousey will get the next shot at Tate, all signs seem to be pointing in that direction, and even Kaufman seems resigned to it. She might have nearly four times as many fights as Rousey, and five years more experience in MMA, but with the fickle nature of the women’s division she knows that doesn’t guarantee her a title shot. What she’s left wondering is, what will?
“I’ve been pushing for the Miesha fight since I fought her,” said Kaufman. “That’s all I can do, is get in interviews and say what I think, which is that I deserve the fight. Maybe that’s not what they want to hear. They want to hear, ‘I’m the prettiest and you can market me and sell me to guys.’ That’s not my thing, and I won’t do that. I’ll present myself as an athlete and be feminine in my own way without being over the top.”
(Can you train yourself to be double-jointed? I’m just wondering, y’know, for Miesha’s sake.)
Though the match has yet to be confirmed by the fighters or the promotion, MMAWeekly and MMAJunkie are both reporting that Miesha Tate will defend her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title against fast-rising prospect and Olympic judo bronze-medalistRonda Rousey in Columbus, Ohio, on March 3rd.
Tate is riding a six-fight win streak, but hasn’t competed since July, when she won her belt by submitting Marloes Coenen via fourth-round arm-triangle choke. A relative newcomer to the sport, Rousey had all four of her professional fights last year, winning each one by armbar in under a minute. But all those fights took place at featherweight or above, and this will be the first time she’ll compete at 135.
Because Rousey’s first fight in her new weight class is a title fight (see also: Keith Jardine), Miesha Tate has made it clear that she doesn’t think Ronda deserves the opportunity, telling FightHubTV:
(Can you train yourself to be double-jointed? I’m just wondering, y’know, for Miesha’s sake.)
Though the match has yet to be confirmed by the fighters or the promotion, MMAWeekly and MMAJunkie are both reporting that Miesha Tate will defend her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title against fast-rising prospect and Olympic judo bronze-medalistRonda Rousey in Columbus, Ohio, on March 3rd.
Tate is riding a six-fight win streak, but hasn’t competed since July, when she won her belt by submitting Marloes Coenen via fourth-round arm-triangle choke. A relative newcomer to the sport, Rousey had all four of her professional fights last year, winning each one by armbar in under a minute. But all those fights took place at featherweight or above, and this will be the first time she’ll compete at 135.
Because Rousey’s first fight in her new weight class is a title fight (see also: Keith Jardine), Miesha Tate has made it clear that she doesn’t think Ronda deserves the opportunity, telling FightHubTV:
“I would have no problem fighting her. My only qualm with her is she is 4-0, 2-0 for Strikeforce. She’s challenging in a weight division she hasn’t competed in yet, and I just don’t think at 4-0, she has earned her title shot. She hasn’t beaten any top contenders in the weight class.”
“What happens when she gets a failed arm bar and someone ends up on top pounding her face in? Is she going to tap out or quit? We don’t know. We haven’t seen that yet. I think it’s kind of silly to put her in with me because that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take it to her. A lot of people are underestimating me. That’s fine. That always seems to be the case. Make no mistake; if Ronda is my next fight, I’m going to come in with a vengeance you’ve never seen before, because to be quite honest, it’s probably going to piss me off…If you weren’t pretty, it wouldn’t matter what you said or didn’t say. That’s why you’re getting this attention. I don’t know, I guess I personally like more of a humble approach.”
So yeah, this should be a good one. Though as Ronda tweeted herself last night, “I haven’t signed anything nothing is official everybody calm down.”
News that 
Sarah Kaufman saw the internet reports of a 