UFC 157, and the history that will be made, is just around the corner.The card will, of course, be headlined by the first women’s bout in UFC history as Ronda Rousey looks to add another arm to her collection. Standing in her way will be former U.S. Ma…
UFC 157, and the history that will be made, is just around the corner.
The card will, of course, be headlined by the first women’s bout in UFC history as Ronda Rousey looks to add another arm to her collection. Standing in her way will be former U.S. Marine Liz Carmouche, who will look to spoil Rousey’s coming-out party.
As important as the main event is for the progression of women’s MMA, UFC 157’s co-main event may be of equal importance. Ageless knockout artist Dan Henderson will face off against Brazilian enigma Lyoto Machida to determine who challenges for the light heavyweight title in their next contest.
In a bantamweight clash, former WEC champion Urijah Faber looks to get back into the win column as he takes on the veteran Ivan Menjivar. Both men are talented and have excellent cardio, so expect a quick, action-packed bout.
Court McGee, a John Hackleman prodigy, will make his welterweight debut after finding mixed success at middleweight. He faces Josh Neer in what can only be described as a “loser leaves town” matchup.
Kicking off the main card will be perennial bad boy Josh Koscheck welcoming Robbie Lawler back to the Octagon. Lawler will be making his first UFC appearance since UFC 50.
Ronda Rousey is a fighter. It started at birth, as the umbilical cord tried to choke the life out of her. It culminates this weekend, when Rousey, along with opponent Liz Carmouche, becomes the first woman ever to step inside the Ulti…
It started at birth, as the umbilical cord tried to choke the life out of her. It culminates this weekend, when Rousey, along with opponent Liz Carmouche, becomes the first woman ever to step inside the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s iconic Octagon. The two will square off at the UFC 157 pay-per-view event in Anaheim, Calif. on Saturday.
It’s something UFC president Dana White said would never happen. And he was adamant. As recently as 2011, the normally verbose White had a single-word answer to TMZ’s question about when he would promote his first women’s match: “Never.”
For Rousey and other fighters on the burgeoning women’s circuit, that was a problem.
Founded in 1993, the UFC was the big leagues of mixed martial arts. While a fighter can make ends meet in smaller promotions, no one was going to get rich or even make a respectable living anywhere but in the UFC.
“I was always asked about Dana saying women would never be in the UFC,” Rousey told Bleacher Report. “And I just said ‘Look, he has no choice about it. I’m going to make him love me. There’s nothing he can do.’
“I was going to be so good and capture so much attention it’s going to be impossible for him to ignore me. It was something that had to be done if I wanted to have any future in this.”
While there had been other stars on the women’s scene, including Gina Carano and Cris “Cyborg” Santos, who drew major television ratings for a UFC competitor on CBS, nothing seemed capable of changing White’s mind.
Nothing, that is, until he met Ronda Rousey.
The two had engaged in friendly banter in the past, and White was impressed with Rousey’s athleticism and skill in the cage. It was clear that women were capable of fighting at a high level. But he remained unconvinced that it was the right fit for his promotion—until a moment backstage in San Diego last August prior to Rousey’s title bout with Canadian Sarah Kaufman.
“I’ve been in the fight business since I was 19 years old,” White told Bleacher Report in an exclusive interview. “And I know real fighters when I see them. She’s a real fighter. She looked right through me with these eyes, like we’d never f***ing met and she didn’t give a f*** if we’d ever meet. I loved it. Loved it.”
The Birth of a Champion
“You’re going to win the Olympics.”
That’s what Ronda’s dad, Ron, told her for years. On the surface, though, Rousey’s journey from judo champion to MMA star is an homage to her mother.
Before Ronda became the first American woman to medal in judo in the Olympic games, her mom, Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, was the first-ever American world champion in the sport. De Mars took the top prize in 1984, four years before women’s judoka competed on the Olympic stage.
But as young Ronda grew up, it wasn’t her mom she patterned herself after. And judo wasn’t her sport. Ronda was daddy’s girl, and their passion was swimming.
Early every morning they would get up and go to the pool. And every day when they were done, he would reaffirm that, despite a slow start, she could be anything she wanted to be.
To him, she was a “sleeper”—a child with vast potential despite her difficulties with speech that kept her from completing a coherent sentence until she was six years old. Ronda’s condition, a product of the umbilical cord that nearly ended her life, had done serious damage to her throat.
To get the speech therapy she needed, the family moved from California to the wilds of North Dakota. There, her mother would study psychology, and the university would provide free treatment for Ronda.
When Ron got a job about two hours from the school, therapists suggested that rather than meet in the middle in a single home, the family should give their youngest daughter some space by keeping two separate residences.
With her two older sisters translating everything she said and making life a little too easy for the runt of the family, Ronda might never progress at the rate she needed.
Her sisters stayed with mom. Ronda moved in with dad.
“He always told her she was going to be the best in the world,” De Mars said. “He always believed in her.”
With her dad, she learned to hunt and to love the outdoors. And to laugh. But it was there, in the hills of North Dakota, where tragedy struck.
A freak sledding accident left Ron with a broken back. With no hope of recovery, he took his own life. When she came home to find black-robed priests in the house, Ronda knew that her father was gone. She was just eight years old.
“I had never seen my mom cry before,” Rousey said in a 2012 interview. “My mom told me ‘your dad’s gone to heaven.'”
Already a girl with communication and social issues, Ronda withdrew further into herself. A return to California only made things worse. Without her father and any friends at school, Ronda was struggling, bad enough that De Mars homeschooled her in the fifth grade.
The answer, however, was staring them all right in the face: judo.
De Mars was hesitant. Expectations, she knew, would be huge. She was a legend in the sport. Ronda would not enter this world unnoticed.
“‘Do your own thing.’ That’s what I told her. She’s never been the best at doing what she’s told,” De Mars said with a laugh. “She was having a lot of trouble in school. I thought, well, with judo at least you have to have a partner. She would have to go out and meet some other kids. Maybe that would help her? I guess it did.”
Some boundaries remained. Mom was never her coach. That would require more tough love than was healthy. But she did help Ronda hone her game.
At just a pinch over 100 pounds and with a knee injury that had hobbled her for years, De Mars focused her attention on the mat, becoming the master of the armbar.
“My only prayer to win was to get them to the ground—armbar them or choke them out. Ninety-five percent or more of the judo I did was mat work,” De Mars said. “It’s going to be a lot easier to win if you focus on the area most people are weak. I did that deliberately.”
Armbars became the bane of Ronda’s existence. Her mom would apply them from anywhere at any time, sneaking up on her daughter and applying the hold—a move designed to dislocate an opponent’s elbow—while she lounged around the house.
What felt like torment at the time was actually a blessing. Ronda learned not just how to defend her mom’s bread-and-butter hold, but how to apply it. By age 13, she was a very dangerous individual.
By age 17, Ronda was an Olympian, surprising everyone but herself by qualifying for the Athens games in 2004. A scrawny kid who didn’t quite fill out her judogi, she suddenly sprouted. After she was already beating grown women with her technique, the added muscle was her ticket to the top of the sport.
“In less than two years, she doubled in size, from 70 or 80 pounds to 140,” De Mars said. “Once she had the muscle, nobody was going to stop her. She went from not fighting in a senior tournament ever to sitting on a flight to go to the Olympic Games in four months.”
Battle with Bulimia
While her judo career was progressing at an incredible pace, Rousey was hiding a secret that was eating her up inside. Her growth spurt had made it difficult for her to make the 138.9 pounds required for a half-middleweight.
For her, there were two battles at every judo competition: the match itself, and the war with the scale two hours before the weigh-in.
“I would get weighed all the time and yelled at for my weight. I had a lot of issues eating healthily and having a healthy self-image. It was something that I struggled with for a very long time,” Rousey said.
“Any sport that involves weight divisions is going to make you super conscious of your weight. And it makes you way more susceptible to having problems. And being a teenage girl certainly didn’t help. I thought I was alone in it. I thought I was only having problems because I was a weak-willed person. I thought having problems with my weight made me a bad person.”
The result was a miserable experience at the Olympics and an internal struggle with her love-hate relationship with judo.
“I felt so bad for Ronda in 2004. She was 16 years old and couldn’t go anywhere by herself. We would all leave and go out, and she would have to sit in her room,” Olympic teammate Rhadi Ferguson said. “She would cry. Her face, man. She was so sad, I’m really not sure how much she enjoyed those first Olympics.”
After the games, she took a break from everyone and everything in her life. She left home, her mother and her judo coach Jim Pedro for two years. Though she only quit judo for two weeks in that two-year span, she was taken completely removed from her comfort zone.
“She started competing at 11 and made the U.S. team at 16. And that had taken up a lot of her life,” De Mars said.
Ronda wanted to do things her way after living a structured life for so long. But in mom’s house, there were limits.
“I’m very old and Catholic and I think if you’re living with somebody you ought to be married to them,” De Mars said. “And she didn’t think that way. There are a lot of things I don’t approve of. And maybe I’m wrong, but if you’re living in my house, I expect you to respect that.”
When Rousey returned to the fold after two years, it was at a new weight class and with a new attitude. She was a happier Ronda, one who screamed, “I want a margarita” after qualifying for the Olympics and who documented her experience at a blog she called, “the judo life from a blonder perspective.”
She would win Olympic bronze in 2008 at 154 pounds, giving up significant size to her opponents rather than drain herself again.
“Sometimes you reach that edge and something pulls them back,” De Mars said. “They realize ‘My God, if I don’t stop now, I’m going to really be in trouble.’ I think Ronda reached that point with finding a healthy weight. It was so hard to make that weight, and Jim Pedro and I told her ‘You don’t have to. You’re good enough to go out and win anyway.'”
Her brush with bulimia is something Rousey hasn’t forgotten. When she recently traded in her 2005 Honda Accord for a new BMW, a gift from the UFC, her mom asked her what good she was going to do the world with her new-found fame. What cause would she get behind?
The answer was immediate: eating disorders.
“It’s not one of the sexy or cool causes. People don’t really want to talk about it,” Rousey said. “I don’t give a damn about being cool. I just want to help people. I’m secretly kind of a squishy, cuddly type. Because of my profession, people think I’m a lot meaner than I am.
“But fighting for a living has quite the opposite effect. I fight every day. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. That means the whole rest of the day I’m so calm, mellow and chilled out. I have no more mean left over.”
The result of a spur of the moment brainstorming session with family and friends was a partnership with the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Clinic called, “Don’t Throw Up, Throw Down!” Together with the experts, Rousey will be taking the fight to bulimia.
She will match donations up to a total of $5,000 and perform a clinic for just the second time since beginning her professional career, donating all the proceeds to help young people with eating disorders.
Inside the Cage
Rousey, like all female fighters in what is still very much a man’s world, has had to prove herself every step of the way. And every step of the way, she’s silenced critics and convinced skeptics that she is every bit as dedicated and talented as her male counterparts.
Even her closest allies needed some convincing. Her trainer Edmond Tarverdyan initially didn’t even want to give her a chance. The Armenian-American muay thai specialist didn’t take women fighters seriously.
But like everyone else, after spending some time with Ronda, he now sings a different tune.
“She’s so strong mentally. She’s special to me,” Tarverdyan said. “I try to treat all the fighters the same and get the most out of them. But Ronda is special. She listens. And she’s a fast learner. She puts a lot of thought into what she does so I have to be the same way.”
Rousey has met six opponents in mixed martial arts action, starting with Ediane Gomes in March 2011. All six have fallen in the very first round, and all six were dispatched by her mom’s favorite hold—the armbar.
Part of her success is driven by instinct. Her mom calls it her “spider sense”—an innate ability to know exactly when and where to strike.
Ronda, a pragmatist, sees her success as the result of thousands of judo matches and hours on the mat.
“It’s not quite chess, where I know where she’s going to be in five moves,” Rousey said. “But I know with every move what her options are and the answers to every one of them. So it’s kind of like being a step-and-a-half ahead.”
The results speak for themselves. Her opponent Liz Carmouche this weekend, in the minds of oddsmakers at least, is an almost impossible underdog. Rousey is a minus-1200 favorite, meaning you would need to risk $1,200 to take home just $100 with a Rousey win.
White is completely on board the Rousey hype train, but he’s also been around the fight game long enough to know that things don’t always go the way you plan.
“If she just keeps wrecking people in the first round of every fight, she’ll go down as the greatest ever,” White said. But the UFC president rejected the notion that Rousey may be unbeatable. “When she medalled in Beijing it wasn’t the gold. So somebody in judo was a little bit better than her.”
White has signed 10 female fighters to contracts with five more on the way, building a division specifically to put Rousey to the test. Potential title fights are in the works, including a possible rematch with former Strikeforce champion Miesha Tate or a bout with Olympic wrestler Sara McMann.
White figures that will buy him another year, and by then some new challengers will hopefully be established. For now, fans don’t seem to mind that Rousey is fighting someone who seems so far out from her talent level.
Media requests are exceeding anything the UFC has ever seen, even when WWE superstar-turned-heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar was at the peak of his drawing power.
Although he won’t publicly speculate about the UFC’s proprietary pay-per-view predictions, White will say that there is every reason to be confident this weekend’s fight card will be a hit.
Speculation is mostly about how quickly Rousey will end the bout. Few seem to give Carmouche much of a chance, but De Mars is one of a handful who worries. Days before the fight, she was at lunch with her priests, harnessing the power of prayer on her daughter’s behalf.
“Maybe because I’ve fought myself so much, but the physical part is not what worries me,” De Mars said. “I worry that some freak thing will happen, she’ll slip on the mat and not win the match. That would kill Ronda. That would be more painful for her than anything physical, even if it’s unlikely.”
Ronda Rousey is a star. The mainstream media attention that UFC 157 is getting has been astonishing, and it is all because of her. If one did not know any better, one would think she has been a long-standing figure in MMA. She has set the world of MMA …
Ronda Rousey is a star. The mainstream media attention that UFC 157 is getting has been astonishing, and it is all because of her. If one did not know any better, one would think she has been a long-standing figure in MMA.
She has set the world of MMA on fire in just two years.
The former Olympian made the move to MMA and has elevated the women’s side of the sport to new heights in an unthinkably short period of time.
March 27, 2011 was the date of her debut against EdieneGomes. Gomes was 6-1 at the time, and her only loss came to Amanda Nunes. Gomes was one of the best fighters at 145 pounds. It seemed like a stiff task for Rousey’s debut.
The fight lasted 25 seconds.
Much is made about Rousey only having six pro fights. That is foolish. First, it ignores her lengthy judo career. Second, go read the names of her opponents. Only Charmaine Tweet, Rousey’s second pro foe, is not recognized as one of the better fighters in women’s MMA.
Sarah D’Alelio, Julia Budd, Miesha Tate and Sarah Kaufman are the other four victims.
Rousey dispatched of all of them by first-round armbar. Those are fantastic fighters whom Rousey made look ridiculous. Her path to the UFC is lined with the arms she has collected.
Other fighters have had a turbulent road to UFC 157. They lost a fight, suffered an injury or had something to overcome leading up to this pay-per-view. Rousey and Carmouchedidn’t even have a division. There was no women’s MMA in the UFC.
Rousey made that happen.
Her blend of beauty, brains and brawn piqued the interest of the public. The turning point was when she got the title shot against Miesha Tate.
The trash talk leading in to that fight had been lacking in women’s MMA. It had never been heard before. Showtime and Strikeforce did an amazing job of marketing that fight, and it was the high point of the March 2012 card. Columbus, Ohio was buzzing about that fight. The MMA world was buzzing about that fight.
Rousey showed that women can be marketable and deliver on fight day.
The road to UFC 157 was built by Ronda Rousey. She put on her hard hat and paved the way for this event to be as big as it will be.
LyotoMachida vs. Dan Henderson is a nice co-main event, but it would never have seen this amount of attention. The media circus is not because the headliner is a novelty act. It is because of Rousey’s personality, story and viciousness inside the cage.
Other fighters’ roads to the top are by virtue of winning fights, and that is an important factor. Rousey’s road had to be built with the addition of speaking up outside of the cage. She generated interest before her fights and then delivered in spectacular fashion.
She will try to do the same for all of the new fans on Saturday.
When the history books are written on women’s MMA, Rousey will be on the cover. Without her, none of this would have been possible. All current and future women’s mixed martial artists owe her a thank you. She has elevated the sport and given female fighters something to shoot for.
Everything should go according to plan on Saturday during the UFC 157 main event.Ronda Rousey will storm out of the gate, eat a few punches in the clinch, then seal her seventh win with a trademark armbar submission in the first round, cementing the fu…
Everything should go according to plan on Saturday during the UFC 157 main event.
Ronda Rousey will storm out of the gate, eat a few punches in the clinch, then seal her seventh win with a trademark armbar submission in the first round, cementing the future of women’s mixed martial arts on the sport’s biggest stage.
That is, unless challenger Liz Carmouche actually beats her.
And while that would mark one of the biggest upsets in MMA history, it could also ruin everything that women’s MMA has worked so hard to achieve.
UFC president Dana White has made it no secret that his interest in female fighters goes only as far as his own Rouseyfandom, telling anyone who asks that she’s “the only reason” women are even in the promotion (via MMA Fighting):
I don’t know how long this is going to last. This could last a year. This could be forever. The 135-pound division could fill up with tons of talent, and we could have tons of great fights. I can’t honestly sit here and predict what’s going to happen, but don’t kid yourself, this is absolutely the only reason this is happening is because of Ronda Rousey.
To date, that’s practically the most commitment that White has shown to female UFC fighters.
But is it just lip service? Can Uncle Dana really be trusted to keep his word when he says that the women’s division will continue on despite Rousey, taking their place on future pay-per-views and TV cards right alongside the men?
We put fights on free TV and fights on pay-per-view. These women are talented. They belong here and they’re gonna come in and fight on a card whether it’s pay-per-view, free TV, undercard or anything and they’ll prove it. We know what we’re doing. They’ve been training their whole lives. They’re the best in the world.
And while that all sounds good on-camera, there’s no telling if White be singing the same tune should Rousey suffer a violent, one-sided beating or a tedious decision loss.
Granted, hardly anyone in the media has had the guts to directly pressure the UFC president on whether the women’s division will die if Rousey loses to Carmouche—but very similar circumstances like this have been seen before.
Just look at what happened to former Strikeforce superstar Gina Carano in the aftermath of her August 2009 bout against Brazilian beast Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos.
One brutal round of vicious punishment erased Carano‘s 7-0 undefeated streak, her fighting career, and temporarily, the future of women’s MMA.
Just like that, Carano‘s star dimmed, leading her to find brighter lights in Hollywood.
But where Carano‘s loss just pushed Strikeforce closer to death, it would be far easier for the UFC to simply drop the women’s division altogether.
Each weight class needs a star. Heavyweight has Cain Velasquez. Welterweight has Georges St-Pierre and Nick Diaz. Middleweight has Anderson Silva. Light Heavyweight has Jon Jones.
But women’s bantamweights need Ronda Rousey—undefeated and dominant.
Even with all her success, “Rowdy” could very easily suffer the same fate as Carano, especially if she’s brutally beaten in the Octagon and subsequently smothered under a torrent of fan backlash from her numerous haters.
That’s why Liz Carmouche, for all her ambition and luck in co-headlining this historic fight, might ultimately be better off losing.
Should “Girl-Rilla” win on Saturday, the future of the division could suddenly be in doubt. Rousey‘s streak would be shattered. The new face of women’s MMA would be permanently bruised, forcing the UFC to shuffle the deck.
After all, parent company Zuffa wants to cut 100 more fighters. Who’s to say that the UFC’s six women—four of them who haven’t even fought in the Octagon yet—wouldn’t be on the chopping block?
All things considered, it’s a risky gamble for the challenger.
Carmouche is justified in wanting to beat Rousey, crown herself as the world’s best female fighter and take home a bigger paycheck than she’s ever seen in her career. But if Dana White closes the curtain on “The Ronda Rousey Show” and women’s MMA, does anyone really win?
McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist and FightFans Radio writer. His work has appeared in GamePro, Macworld and PC World. Talk with him on Twitter.
One of the most anticipated UFC cards in recent memory will take place this Saturday from the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. UFC 157 will feature the promotion’s first foray into the world of women’s mixed martial arts when Ronda Rous…
One of the most anticipated UFC cards in recent memory will take place this Saturday from the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.
UFC 157 will feature the promotion’s first foray into the world of women’s mixed martial arts when Ronda Rousey puts her UFC women’s bantamweight title on the line against Liz Carmouche.
The evening’s co-main event will also be of interest as Dan Henderson and LyotoMachida will face off to decide who will face the winner of UFC 159’s main event, which will see light heavyweight champion Jon Jones defend his title against ChaelSonnen.
It will also be interesting to see how Urijah Faber will react to the fact that he was named by Dana White as a fighter who is in danger of being released from his contract, perhaps joining the group of fighters who were released by the UFC on Wednesday. Faber will face Ivan Menjivar on the pay-per-view portion of the UFC 157 card.
In all the fans in Anaheim will witness 12 fights on Saturday, but before the fighters can throw down in the Octagon they’ll have to step on the scale. Official weigh-ins for UFC 157 will take place on Friday at 7 p.m. ET / 4 PT, and Bleacher Report will have the results as they take place.
For the first time in UFC history, a card will not only feature but be headlined by a women’s title fight in the bantamweight division. We know what you’re thinking, “How are they going to fit an entire kitchen into the octagon?” but hear us out for a second. Pitting Olympic bronze medalist Ronda Rousey against Marine tuff Liz Carmouche, UFC 157 will look to break down the wall that has existed between men’s and women’s MMA for almosttwo years now. We kid, we kid, but will the UFC’s women’s division steal the show come Saturday night? And technically speaking, can you steal a show when you are the main event? These questions and others will be answered this Saturday night in Anaheim at the (R)Honda Center.
And with any big MMA event comes the opportunity to chip away at (or add to) those crippling debts we all are surely facing. So join us after the jump as we highlight some of the undercard and all the main card bouts for UFC 157 with the hopes of cashing in on some attractive betting lines, which come courtesy of BestFighOdds as always.
Currently, Chiesa is right around -225, but look for that line to close around -300 by fight night. Anton has been more of a threat on the mat than on his feet thus far in his UFC run, but giving up almost half a foot in height to the Alpha Male-affiliated Chiesa will do him no favors in either department. Chiesa should be able to control this fight with his size advantage and continue his Cinderella story in the UFC.
By Dan “Get Off Me” George
For the first time in UFC history, a card will not only feature but be headlined by a women’s title fight in the bantamweight division. We know what you’re thinking, “How are they going to fit an entire kitchen into the octagon?” but hear us out for a second. Pitting Olympic bronze medalist Ronda Rousey against Marine tuff Liz Carmouche, UFC 157 will look to break down the wall that has existed between men’s and women’s MMA for almosttwo years now. We kid, we kid, but will the UFC’s women’s division steal the show come Saturday night? And technically speaking, can you steal a show when you are the main event? These questions and others will be answered this Saturday night in Anaheim at the (R)Honda Center.
And with any big MMA event comes the opportunity to chip away at (or add to) those crippling debts we all are surely facing. So join us after the jump as we highlight some of the undercard and all the main card bouts for UFC 157 with the hopes of cashing in on some attractive betting lines, which come courtesy of BestFighOdds as always.
Currently, Chiesa is right around -225, but look for that line to close around -300 by fight night. Anton has been more of a threat on the mat than on his feet thus far in his UFC run, but giving up almost half a foot in height to the Alpha Male-affiliated Chiesa will do him no favors in either department. Chiesa should be able to control this fight with his size advantage and continue his Cinderella story in the UFC.
If there is one underdog to pick on this card, the argument for Lavar Johnson at +110 is strong. Lavar will enjoy a three inch reach advantage over his opponent, which has been a deciding factor in both of his UFC victories. Schaub surprised many against Cro Cop back at UFC 128 but has shown some significant holes in his stand up game (not to mention his chin) in the time since. Each unnecessary second Schaub stands with Johnson will be detrimental to both his UFC career and his ability to ingest food without wearing a bib, and being that Schaub has yet to submit an opponent in his career, we should assume for the time being that Johnson won’t become the first. Not because Johnson has an incredible ground game, but rather because he packs enough power in his hands to stop Schaub before it gets to that point, like Nog and Rothwell have in the past.
Court will be making his debut at 170lbs here and at -285 will be parlay bound against UFC veteran Josh Neer. Short of being robbed against Nick Ring, Court has only lost to Costa Phillipou (a top middleweight) and has never truly been dominated inside the Octagon. Neer might be able to cut Court with those vicious elbows, but McGee should have little trouble taking the fight to the ground when Neer eventually overcommits trying to close the distance. Neer is a former lightweight and McGee is a former middleweight; ultimately Court should be the stronger fighter and control this fight from start to finish.
Not much of a chance has been given to the returning Robbie Lawler here and perhaps rightfully so. Much like Paulo Thiago, Lawler is being given a puncher’s chance against Koscheck, which is a position Lawler could be dangerous in (see his fight against Melvin Manhoef). Koscheck may look for the takedown early and often, and Lawler’s ability to defend said takedown will determine this fight in and of itself. If there was a way to put money on the likelihood of Kos eye-poking Lawler in this fight I would recommend it outright, but the Koscheck by decision prop seems a little more reasonable.
A rematch 7 years in the making will be settled on Saturday night when Ivan Menjivar looks to avenge his controversial DQ loss to Urijah Faber that transpired in the now defunct TKO promotion. Urijah is approaching -400, but the speed and grappling advantage he will have against Menjivar justifies the price, especially when considering how easily Mike Easton was able to use those same skills to defeat Menjivar at UFC 148. Menjivar will not be able to catch up to Faber long enough to do any substantial damage, therefore justifying Faber’s place in our parlay.
Machida is the right favorite and may prove to be too elusive for Hendo’s right hand in this fight. Machida should play the matador role in this one and simply fight off his back foot until the opportunity arises to counter Henderson; the fact that Hendo is coming off a knee injury only solidifies the notion that he may be limited in his movement. The wrestling advantage may be with Hendo, but Machida has the skills to survive on the mat and Hendo doesn’t wrestle all that much in his fights. Looking back at Franklin/Henderson, Machida has all the tools to stay on the outside and outpoint Hendo for a decision victory.
Ronda Rousey is undefeated, perfection on the mat, and way, way overpriced in this fight. A 10-to-1 favorite is usually a pointless bet to make and Ronda is no exception here, as Liz Carmouche has to know what to expect in this fight (Ed note: Not that that has helped anyone before). Liz will have to get the better of Ronda in the stand up department because a win on the ground is simply not an option. Ronda has admitted that she is not taking Liz lightly in this bout and will most likely look to put the Marine on her back and go fishing for another arm to bring home. As always, the ladies should deliver an exciting fight and start the woman’s division off with a bang.
