The soundtrack to Ronda Rousey’s UFC career has always been a ticking clock.
Rousey is so special, her talent so glaringly cant-miss, that we’ve always known we couldn’t keep her forever. Someday, somebody’s going to come along and offer her a boatload of money for a job that doesn’t involve getting punched in the face, and then she’ll be gone.
Each time we’ve watched Rousey defend her UFC women’s bantamweight title—as she will against Cat Zingano on Saturday at UFC 184—we’ve been haunted by fears that it could be the last time. When she spent a substantial stretch away from the cage during 2013 to appear in a couple of movies, we thought it was the beginning of the end.
But perhaps there’s suddenly good news on that front. Leading up to her clash with the undefeated Zingano, there is actually less trepidation about a potential Rousey retirement than ever before.
Maybe that’s partly because there are big-money challenges right around the corner from people like Holly Holm and Cris “Cyborg” Justino. Maybe it’s partly because, if anything, our fears overlooked the champ’s own competitive fire.
Suddenly, Rousey sounds like she’s in no hurry to leave us behind.
At a press event earlier this week, she said she’ll fight until she considers herself the greatest of all time. At any weight class. Man or woman.
“I’ll know when I reach the point, like, ‘OK, I’m the most dominant and the greatest of all time,’” Rousey said, via MMAFighting.com’s Mark Raimondi. “I know that I’m there and I’ll be ready to hang up my gloves and move on. But whether or not anyone else sees it that way doesn‘t matter. Because I’ll see it that way.”
This obviously is a very Ronda Rousey thing to say. If her goal, however, is to keep fighting until she can lay legitimate claim to being the GOAT, it should set our minds at ease.
She’s got a long way to go before she’s even in that conversation.
As good as Rousey has been, she’s only been in the UFC a hair longer than two years. To be considered a serious threat to usurp fighters like Anderson Silva, Georges St-Pierre or Fedor Emelianenko for all-time great status could take another decade.
Remember that from 2001-09, Emelianenko won more than twice as many fights in a row (27) as Rousey has had in her entire career (10). Prior to his initial loss to Chris Weidman at UFC 153, Silva likewise reigned as middleweight champion for more than six-and-a-half years. That’s longer than Rousey has even been a professional fighter.
Silva additionally went 3-0 fighting at light heavyweight and unified his title with the Pride welterweight championship when he beat Dan Henderson at UFC 82. Emelianenko ruled Pride during a time when its crop of heavyweights was the best in the world and had legendary rivalries with greats like Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Mirko Cro Cop.
Could Rousey ever surpass the accomplishments of these great champions? Maybe, but she’d have to stick around an awful lot longer than we’ve previously thought possible.
Could she ever eclipse the promotional power of St-Pierre? Maybe not ever.
During his two stints as welterweight champion from 2006-13,GSP established himself as the UFC’s king of pay-per-views. The 13 events where he appeared as champion averaged a bit more than 758,000 buys each. Rousey’s drawing power, meanwhile, is a bit murkier.
She took on Miesha Tate in the co-main event of UFC 167, which—with Silva-Weidman II as its other main event—sold an estimated 1.025 million units. Likewise, her most recent appearance against Alexis Davis, as the co-main of UFC 175 (supporting Weidman vs. Lyoto Machida), also sold well, at an estimated 545,000 buys.
Yet the two events she has headlined on her own have been significantly less successful. Neither her UFC 157 debut against Liz Carmouche nor her UFC 170 fight with Sara McMann crested 500,000 buys. What does that mean, exactly? Nobody is sure, though her meeting with Zingano this weekend might shed a bit more light on the subject.
If the event outperforms expectations, perhaps it will be seen as a sign that Rousey is bringing significant numbers of paying customers to the table. If it doesn‘t? It could mean she’s still got a way to go.
One thing we can say without reservation, however: Rousey is no St-Pierre. She’s no Emelianenko. She’s no Silva. Not close. Not yet.
None of this is her fault, by the way. She’s been nothing short of a revelation since coming to the UFC from Strikeforce in 2013. You can’t watch her fight or cut an interview or just stand there in a room without being struck by her innate charisma. She has it. She has “it” to spare.
But she’s not the greatest MMA fighter of all time. Not by any meaningful metric.
In fact, at this stage in the game it’s impossible to know if Rousey will ever get the chance to vie for GOAT status. Surely she’s already a step behind fellow champion Jon Jones in that race to the top. Unless Jones unexpectedly breaks stride, she likely won’t ever catch him.
The UFC also hasn’t done Rousey’s legacy any favors, preferring to couch the 135-pound division as a one-woman show. Every great fighter needs great competition, and so far Rousey hasn’t had a ton of it. Unless future foes like Zingano, Holm or and/or Cyborg prove to be more formidable than her past opponents, it’s tough to see Rousey building a resume that will stack up alongside other all-time greats.
In any case, she doesn’t seem to care about resumes. Or metrics. Or what anybody else thinks. Not caring, in fact, is one of her defining characteristics and a big part of her considerable star power.
“I’m trying to be as dominant as possible,” she said, via Raimondi. “… But I can only control what’s put in front of me to control, not how people perceive my accomplishments.”
Rousey’s accomplishments to date have been phenomenal. But if what she wants is to be regarded as the greatest of all time, it won’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in two years and four fights in the UFC. It won’t happen tomorrow. It won’t even happen next year.
But hey, if that means we get more time with Ronda Rousey, nobody will complain.
Statistics on pay-per-view buys courtesy of Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t MMAPayout.com).
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