Ronda Rousey returns to the Octagon on Saturday night on an eight-week turnaround, defending her women’s bantamweight title for the second time in less than two months.
Across the cage, she’ll see fellow Olympic medalist Sara McMann, a bullish wrestler…
Ronda Rousey returns to the Octagon on Saturday night on an eight-week turnaround, defending her women’s bantamweight title for the second time in less than two months.
Across the cage, she’ll see fellow Olympic medalist Sara McMann, a bullish wrestler who has the potential to match her at every turn and provide her most competitive test to date.
With so many possible outcomes on the table in an MMA fight, the following offers some thoughts on potential conclusions to the UFC 170 main event. Odds provided are estimates for consideration; these numbers may be worth a look if you intend on wagering come fight time.
It’s a good thing the UFC changed its Fight Night bonus structure to reward Performance of the Night as opposed to specifically recognizing dynamic knockouts.
The action from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on Saturday at UFC 170 just might be shor…
It’s a good thing the UFC changed its Fight Night bonus structure to reward Performance of the Night as opposed to specifically recognizing dynamic knockouts.
The action from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on Saturday at UFC 170 just might be short on KO finishes.
Mixed martial arts fans who love a good knockout may want to tune in to the early action. The highest probabilities for KO seem to be in the preliminary bouts. Here’s a look at the fights that have the best chance to end brutally and abruptly.
Ernest “The Mad Titan” Chavez vs. Yosdenis “The Pink Panther” Cedeno
This is the first fight scheduled for the UFC Fight Pass portion of the show, and it may not last long. Both Chavez and Cedeno have finished at least half of their wins by KO or TKO.
The men have nearly identical frames and are making their UFC debuts. There will be pressure to make a splash, and nothing makes a statement like a KO win. Look for both men to come out throwing bombs to end things quickly.
Cedeno is the smart pick if you’re looking for a winner. He’s quick, explosive and dangerous.
Take a look at what Zane Simon of Bloody Elbow said about “The Pink Panther”:
Watching him fight is all about thrilling entertainment, ‘The Pink Panther’ as he styles himself, is very much a panther in the cage. He has quick movement and solid footwork and is constantly looking for opportunities to pounce on opponent’s mistakes.
This highlight and feature on Cedeno shows off a bit of the aforementioned explosiveness:
It seems hard to imagine him not at least delivering an exciting bout.
Rafaello “Tractor” Oliveira vs. Erik “New Breed” Koch
Koch has run into two straight buzzsaws in his MMA career. He was brutally finished by Ricardo Lamas in January 2013. He then lost a unanimous decision to Dustin Poirier in August 2013.
While those two losses were undoubtedly tough for Koch, let’s not forget how dynamic New Breed is. His submission game is spectacular, but his striking is also formidable.
Raphael Assuncao learned that the hard way when Koch knocked him out in the first round back in March 2011.
Coming off consecutive losses, Koch has a lot to prove. For this fight, he has moved up to 155 pounds and appears to be in fantastic shape without the worries of trying to cut weight.
As he says in this tweet, he’s happy and looks ready to go:
His opponent is a skilled and experienced jiu-jitsu artist, but he’s shown a weakness to the KO finish in his career.
Edson Barboza stopped Oliveira in his last fight in July 2013, and Yves Edwards scored a spectacular finish against him in October 2011. A motivated and desperate Koch will hand him another KO defeat on Saturday.
Ronda Rousey and Sara McMann met in the UFC 170 main event for the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship on Saturday night.
Rousey (8-0) and fellow undefeated Olympic medalist McMann (7-0) have been on a collision course since they entered the sport. T…
Ronda Rousey and Sara McMann met in the UFC 170 main event for the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship on Saturday night.
Rousey (8-0) and fellow undefeated Olympic medalist McMann (7-0) have been on a collision course since they entered the sport. The arena was on fire, and just in a little over a minute the fight was over.
Rousey landed a knee to the liver, and McMann dropped to the canvas. She was not defending herself when she dropped, and Herb Dean stopped the fight. It was the first time Rousey won with something other than the armbar, and it was still beautifully violent.
In terms of unfortunate realities, UFC 170 was in a pretty miserable place as recently as two weeks ago: The co-main event was between two top contenders, and pretty much no one cared.
Rashad Evans and Daniel Cormier were set to square off, each perhap…
In terms of unfortunate realities, UFC 170 was in a pretty miserable place as recently as two weeks ago: The co-main event was between two top contenders, and pretty much no one cared.
Rashad Evans and Daniel Cormier were set to square off, each perhaps a win away from a title shot. Evans has been resurgent after a loss in February last year, and Cormier is a long-undersized heavyweight finally willing to fight in his true weight class.
And no one cared.
It could be the UFC’s insistence on pairing Evans with Fox co-workers (next up: Evans versus Karyn Bryant on a card headlined by Joe Buck battling Troy Aikman) or that Cormier needs more of a jerk like Roy Nelson or Frank Mir to make people interested.
It could be that, on a card with Ronda Rousey, neither man is going to be the star because of the promotion’s recent Ronda regimen.
Perhaps the fight just had an air of one happening because two halfway relevant dudes needed to fight in order to justify a pay-per-view in the middle of February, and those two were healthy and available.
Regardless of the reasoning, it wasn’t catching people’s attention.
A lot can change in a few days.
Evans went down last week with a knee injury, on the shelf until later this year after surgery. Cormier, threatened with removal from the card, pleaded with the entire universe to step up and fight him. Pat Cummins, serving coffee in California, said, “Sure, why not?” and signed with the UFC.
Wait, what?
Yeah, totally.
Local cauliflower-eared barista Pat Cummins said he’d fight Cormier, and the UFC was into it. Cummins, a 4-0 prospect with a history with Cormier, said he wanted the fight, and after a little digging by the promotion, the UFC thought it could work.
So far, it has.
Cummins has a natural salesmanship about him, a knack for saying the exact right thing when the cameras are on to make people want to watch him fight. He also has that chance-of-a-lifetime charm that fans are always curious of, and he’s handled the early days of his UFC run with surprising aplomb for an unknown.
When given the chance at Cormier, he immediately let the world know that he’d made the Olympian cry in training. The move drew attention from fans and heat regarding the “code” in wrestling, but Cummins dealt with that as well.
“That’s the business,” he told MMA Fighting‘s Dave Doyle at this week’s open workouts. “We need to come out here and we’re getting in a fight.”
He continued: “The wrestling community hasn’t had a big outcry on the wrestling code thing, I think [that] was him backpedaling a little bit.”
There’s little question that an Evans-Cormier fight would be more competitive, but if we’re being honest right now, that’s not what the UFC needs. It needs a guy who can say some crazy stuff, who has enough history to sell the human element and maybe move a few units come Saturday night.
Evans and Cormier, for all their competitive appeal, weren’t doing that.
UFC 170 is not deep. By most reasonable standards, due to injuries and an unsustainable run of 10 events in 13 weeks, it’s not even good. Rousey or no Rousey, it needed to be sold, and the women’s champion was having a hard time on her own with an opponent so disinterested in making a sale.
Cummins has done that, at least to the extent one could call reasonable. He’s had a short time to work, sold himself well and made it evident that he and Cormier aren’t going to be pals when the cage door closes on Saturday night.
The fight itself is almost irrelevant for the UFC, because it got more than it ever bargained for by signing Cummins. He’s no Rashad Evans, but in a totally different way, he might prove more valuable this weekend.
Sometimes you say things that get you in trouble. Writing a cheque your behind can’t cash is one phrase for it, though there are others.
In recent weeks UFC president Dana White has been writing that variety of cheque so often he’s probably icing his w…
Sometimes you say things that get you in trouble. Writing a cheque your behind can’t cash is one phrase for it, though there are others.
In recent weeks UFC president Dana White has been writing that variety of cheque so often he’s probably icing his wrist as we speak, and there’s been unprecedented backlash from fans as a result.
Seriously, go to popular MMA forum The Underground and look at the number of threads directed in frustration at White and his promotion. Or check out Luke Thomas’ Chat Wrap over at MMA Fighting this week, where he’s inundated with so many fan questions and comments on White that he’s visibly baffled.
One of his most egregious cheque writings has come in the form of a proclamation that Ronda Rousey is the biggest star the UFC has. Not only now, but ever.
Even the most ardent UFC supporters and White fans are finding that one tough to take, especially considering names like Ortiz, Liddell, Lesnar and St-Pierre aren’t exactly distant memories.
Really, names like Gracie and Shamrock aren’t exactly distant memories.
But ignore even that much, or take it at face value. Say Rousey is, in fact, the biggest star the promotion has ever had. She’s not, but say she is for the sake of argument. Boy, does the UFC need her to win on Saturday night.
At a time when St-Pierre is gone, Anderson Silva is up in the air and champions people are interested in like Anthony Pettis and Cain Velasquez are out for a prolonged stretch, the UFC needs a dominant champion to market.
Considering it doesn’t seem keen on making Jon Jones that star, despite the fact he’s earned the right more than anyone else in the promotion, it has to be Rousey. If she loses to Sara McMann at UFC 170—something far closer to a reality than almost anyone seems willing to admit—it’s in deep trouble.
The UFC, or at least White, has put so many eggs in the Rousey basket that a bump in the road will be crushing should she lose. It’s worked so hard to sell her as the face of the promotion that there hasn’t been time to consider the risks involved.
She’s still, like it or not, a two-fight UFC veteran with only eight total pro bouts under her belt.
She’s shown that, like it or not, if she can’t hit a throw and control position on the ground things will get interesting in a hurry.
She seems, like it or not, pretty keen on getting out of the fight game early and has hinted at retiring young. She has movie offers coming in all over the place, and they apparently pay pretty well.
Those don’t seem to be the circumstances you’d want to build your biggest star around if you could choose to, but the UFC can’t choose given the current climate. It’s working with an air of desperation, like the snowball of promotional operation is already on its way down the mountain and its racing to catch up before it gets too big to handle.
That could be for any number of reasons.
It could be the retirements and injuries that have plagued the roster recently.
It could be the oversaturation of fight cards filled with no-names that prevent fans from connecting with the roster.
It could be the misguided belief that online fights from the other side of the world in the middle of the night are a good foundation on which to build your house of cards.
Realistically it doesn’t matter. The UFC is out there selling Rousey as its biggest star because someone has to be its biggest star and there aren’t a whole lot of options these days.
Now, more than ever, the UFC needs her to win. It needs her to win not only more than its ever needed her to win, it needs her to win more than its ever needed anyone to win.
The fans aren’t happy. The roster is banged up and spread thin. There are countless questions where there were never questions before.
If Ronda Rousey is the biggest star the UFC has, it can’t afford to see her upset on Saturday night. If she is there’s no telling how the promotion will handle it, but it won’t be pretty.
Saturday night will see two Olympic-caliber combat athletes go toe-to-toe on the last night of the Sochi Games, when women’s bantamweight champion and former judo medalist Ronda Rousey battles wrestling ace-turned-MMA star Sara McMann in Las Vegas.
The…
Saturday night will see two Olympic-caliber combat athletes go toe-to-toe on the last night of the Sochi Games, when women’s bantamweight champion and former judo medalist Ronda Rousey battles wrestling ace-turned-MMA star Sara McMann in Las Vegas.
There’s plenty of intrigue in that main event, though McMann is a considerable underdog and most are assuming the champion will retain in a romp. That’s been her custom so far in MMA, and it’s easier to ride that wave than it is to defend the merit of McMann‘s challenge.
Except McMannis a challenge, and the merit of that warrants defending. She’s a lifelong grinder with the size, strength and technical acumen to give Rousey utter fits when the cage door closes. If she can do that for 25 minutes, she’ll leave town an improbable champion.
To see her path to that goal, one must first consider Rousey as an obstacle. The champion has, to this point, enjoyed success at 135 lbs for a couple of major reasons: She’s a generally better, grossly more experienced athlete than her peers and she’s a hulking bantamweight who has competed at far higher weights for much of her life.
Against McMann, both of those cornerstones become largely moot.
The challenger has the same degree of experience and the same degree of athleticism, and she has the Olympic hardware to prove it. What Rousey accomplished in judo, McMann matched (or bettered, if one wants to split hairs) in wrestling.
She’s also by far the most physically impressive combatant the UFC has in its women’s bantamweight division, cut with musculature that most male bantamweights on the roster can’t match. Only a life in wrestling would ever give her the tools to cut weight to 135 lbs; no other discipline would equip her to get close.
Assuming those points hold and the experience, athleticism and physicality are a wash, then it really comes down to technical ability.
Rousey is a flawless judoka, one who uses the clinch better than anyone in the sport. Her ability to load her hips from the ground up and get pop on her throws is unlike any fighter MMA has ever seen. When her fight is on the mat, it has an air of inevitability regarding her ability to finish. It’s not if, but when.
For her part, McMann is surely her equal as a wrestler, though she may be a little behind Rousey‘s curve in terms of adapting it to MMA. She’s a technical marvel with the type of shot that simply doesn’t exist at this point in the development of women’s MMA, and her considerable physical gifts allow her to put a little English on takedowns to finish them when her technique isn’t perfect.
That will be the key for McMann if she’s to upset Rousey: put the champion on her back and keep her there. Rough her up with elbows from guard and pass as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
Do not under any circumstances throw punches from inside of guard, because that’s a road that will lead to being caught in an armbar. Period.
A high pace and relentless offensive thrust is the key to victory, something that’s been proven to a degree in Rousey‘s prior UFC appearances. Liz Carmouche gave her a hard time by being aggressive, and Miesha Tate took it several steps further with a willingness to absorb a beating to dish one out.
McMann should be thinking of ChaelSonnen in his first crack at Anderson Silva, specifically focusing on how she can round out five rounds instead of succumbing to an improbable submission at the last minute.
These are the two best pure athletes in the promotion at their weight, and that makes this a close fight.
The UFC may not want it to be because Rousey is the hot new star, and it can make money on her name.
Fans may not want it to be because Rousey is a hero to some and a villain to others, while McMann is just a pleasant mom from Maryland, and it’s not as much fun to be heated about her.
Rousey may not want it to be because she’s building a brand and a reputation, and having a wrestler smash your face for five rounds is a hard way to keep Hollywood interested.
But that doesn’t change anything: The main event of UFC 170 is going to be hotly contested, and McMann can win it. The blueprint is there, but Rousey will surely have something to say about how well she follows it.
It’s a good thing the UFC changed its 