Since she made the full-time switch to MMA in 2013, Holly Holm has been on a collision course with Ronda Rousey. The former boxing champion, some pundits and fans have said, has a real chance of defeating the grappling-first UFC queenpin.
Now that the …
Since she made the full-time switch to MMA in 2013, Holly Holm has been on a collision course with Ronda Rousey. The former boxing champion, some pundits and fans have said, has a real chance of defeating the grappling-first UFC queenpin.
Now that the time has arrived, in the aftermath of two somewhat underwhelming performances and Rousey’s string of unreal dominance, oddsmakers are less confident in Holm’s chances. She stands as a 12:1 underdog at UFC 193, which goes down Saturday night at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia.
Still, at least on paper, Holm provides a challenge Rousey has never seen before in the form of world-class striking.
Rousey has become an international superstar by any metric, with film roles and regular appearances in the mainstream media, and she is undeniably the main attraction. The rest of the card, however, still holds real intrigue.
In the co-main event, strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk defends her belt for the second time against Valerie Letourneau. The Pole seems to be on the verge of stardom herself with her fan-friendly style and charisma, and the UFC is looking to capitalize on Rousey’s success by introducing a second yet very different female champion to a wide audience.
Aside from the out-of-place heavyweight bout between Stefan Struve and Jared Rosholt that opens the pay-per-view portion of the event, the rest of the main card caters to the 55,000-plus Australian fans who will pack into the biggest venue in the promotion’s history.
Aging but popular heavyweights Mark Hunt and Antonio Silva will run it back after their first fight ended in a draw in December 2013. Flashy striker Uriah Hall takes his fifth fight in 2015 against Australia resident Robert Whittaker in an outstanding middleweight matchup.
The preliminary card is full of Australian fighters. The highlights are talented prospect Jake Matthews headlining the Fox Sports 1 portion of the broadcast and the flyweight scrap between Ben Nguyen and Ryan Benoit that opens the Fight Pass prelims, which should be a barnburner. Otherwise, there is little of interest even to hardcore fight fans.
Holly Holm certainly has the ability to beat Ronda Rousey on Saturday at UFC 193.
If you’re out hunting around for reasons to believe Holm can unseat the fight company’s most dominant champion, that’s the good news. If Holm manages to…
Holly Holm certainly has the ability to beat Ronda Rousey on Saturday at UFC 193.
If you’re out hunting around for reasons to believe Holm can unseat the fight company’s most dominant champion, that’s the good news. If Holm manages to keep this fight off the ground, to control the distance and prevent Rousey from utilizing her ferocious submission game, she’s got a chance. Maybe even a good one.
The bad news is, she’ll have to fight a perfect fight to make that strategy work.
For Holm, the margin for error in this bout will be damn-near nonexistent.
The 34-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, native actually stacks up as well physically against Rousey as anybody we’ve seen try their luck thus far. Holm will enjoy height and reach advantages and may be the best pure athlete Rousey has faced during her professional career.
But if the challenger’s best hope is to stick and move, to make Rousey pursue her and slow the champ’s attack through a lengthy accumulation of blows—well, that’s going to be a tall order. And Holm will likely have to do it for five full rounds.
And Rousey? She just needs Holm to make one mistake.
Just ask Cat Zingano about that. Or ask Sara McMann. Or ask Liz Carmouche. All of them appeared to have styles that could make things interesting for Rousey.
In the end, none of them did.
For good measure, ask Miesha Tate.
Tate has spent more time in the cage with Rousey than any other woman—15 minutes, 25 seconds over the course of two fights. In the absence of other perennial contenders, she’s styled herself as Rousey’s arch nemesis and was supposed to be next up for the champ before getting unexpectedly passed over in favor of Holm.
It could just be that disappointment talking, but Tate told Ariel Helwani this week on The MMA Hour that she doesn’t like Holm’s chances against The Rowdy One.
“I just don’t think it’s a good style match-up,” Tate said, via MMA Fighting’s Shaun Al Shatti. “I really don’t. I don’t think that she’s going to be able to stop Ronda for 25 minutes [from] taking her down and beating her, even if she jabs and moves.”
Oddsmakers seem to agree, making Holm a whopping 12-1 underdog, according to the latest lines at Odds Shark.
So, too, does the media:
Holm says that’s fine by her.
“I don’t mind you saying I’m a huge underdog, because I am a huge underdog,” she told Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole. “But the odds have nothing to do with how I’ll perform. I wouldn’t have taken the fight if I didn’t think I was ready or didn’t believe I could win.”
And look, it isn’t as though Holm lacks the power to stop Rousey on the feet. In fact, she’s finished six fights en route to her current 9-0 professional MMA record. Here she is taking care of Allanna Jones via vicious head kick at Legacy FC 21 in July 2013:
But Holm is also known as a slow starter. None of her stoppages have occurred in the first round. Through a pair of fights in the Octagon, she’s come off a little tentative, nearly letting Raquel Pennington spoil her promotional debut at UFC 184.
Holm eked out victory in that bout by split decision. Her second fight was slightly more impressive—against dangerous grappler Marion Reneau—but she still wound up taking a fairly tepid unanimous decision.
Even before she arrived in the UFC, people had Holm tabbed as a potential test for Rousey. Still, it might have been nice to give her a little more time to get her legs under her on the big stage before she earned this title shot. There is a real danger she has been handed her chance at Rousey and bantamweight gold before she really hits her stride in the UFC.
It seemed premature to boost Holm into this bout when the UFC first announced it for UFC 195 in January 2016. And that was before an injury to welterweight champion Robbie Lawler forced the organization to scramble to find a main event that might draw a respectably large crowd to Melbourne, Australia’s massive Etihad Stadium for UFC 193.
Rousey and Holm got the call and their fight was moved up by a month and a half. End result: what already shaped up as a tough assignment for Holm this early in her UFC career got even tougher.
Now, not only has she had to prepare for Rousey on a slightly accelerated timetable, but she’ll also have to handle the spectacle of this event.
Etihad Stadium reportedly will be set up to hold 70,000 people, per Fox Sports. There’s no telling how many will actually show up for UFC 193, but it stands to be a lot. Most of them are expected to be there rabidly in support of Rousey.
As if the champion needs any more help.
Perhaps Rousey’s biggest advantage in any fight is that her skill set makes it so she doesn’t have to be perfect. She can make a few mistakes and still recover. She can let a punch slip through her defenses or get out of position on the ground and still compensate for it with her own athleticism and preternatural grappling.
Contrast that with Holm who—like all Rousey’s other opponents—is likely finished if she even lets the champion get her hands on her, and you begin to see how big a benefit that really is.
Holm must control the distance in this fight without allowing Rousey to get within clinching range. If the champion gets into position and starts chaining together judo takedowns, look out.
Holm brings a wealth of experience with her between her nearly 40 pro boxing matches and a four-year MMA career. She also comes from the vaunted Jackson-Winkeljohn MMA team, so you can bet she’ll be as well prepared as possible.
Still, this all sounds like a lot for anyone to handle.
Holm will have to make her third UFC appearance inside an enormous arena more than 10,000 miles from home. Oh yeah, and she’ll have to do it against the best fighter in the world, knowing she needs to be perfect to have a chance to win.
Every fight counts in the UFC. That’s a fact that applies to every event. UFC 193, though, is a special occasion for the fighters who are set to do battle for two reasons.
The first, you ask? Well, as you may have heard, a certain A-list celebrity by …
Every fight counts in the UFC. That’s a fact that applies to every event. UFC 193, though, is a special occasion for the fighters who are set to do battle for two reasons.
The first, you ask? Well, as you may have heard, a certain A-list celebrity by the name of Ronda Rousey is set to appear on the card Saturday, and with that, a huge number of new, impressionable fans will be right there, waiting to be impressed. These fans don’t know who is a good fighter, who has a bunch of ugly losses to his or her name or who stunk up the joint in his or her last fight.
The brass rings are hanging out there; the fighters just need to grab them.
The second? While the rewards for success are higher than ever, the punishment for failure doesn’t get much more severe. The UFC is purging its roster in a way the sports has rarely seen, with dozens of fighters already receiving pink slips. There are more than a few fighters at UFC 193 with shaky career footing right now, and Saturday’s event could lead to a half-dozen cuts on its own.
With the stakes this high, who has the most on the line? Who is on a hot, hot seat right now?
Stefan Struve
The Skyscraper has long been one of the greatest “What if?” stories in MMA. At 6’11”, sometimes even booked at a full 7’0″, he has the physical tools to become a force in the Octagon. Unfortunately, while he has been able to utilize his height on the ground, using his long limbs to pull off submissions that others can’t imitate, his striking is just…not good.
Perhaps the greatest talent scout in MMA today, Struve has an uncanny ability to find the next big entrant to the UFC title scene and get knocked out by him. With the sole exception of his fight with StipeMiocic, he has eaten big punches and collapsed like a push puppet against every present or future top-10 fighter he has gone up against.
For a long while, Struve was able to sandwich wins in between those stumbles, but a health scare (heart) and some fearsome competition resulted in his eating back-to-back losses to Mark Hunt and Alistair Overeem. While Struve bounced back with a ho-hum win over Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in August, he is set to face a formidable grinder in Jared Rosholt at UFC 193.
Fighting with the backdrop of a major roster purge, if he loses here, and loses in boring fashion, he might get bumped from the UFC.
Uriah Hall
Speaking of “What if?” stories, Uriah Hall is set to replace Michael Bisping and face off with Robert Whittaker at UFC 193.
Hall has been an enigma. Ever since his run on The Ultimate Fighter‘s 17th season, fans have pegged him as one of the UFC’s most deadly. His quick, accurate, perfectly executed strikes are capable of catching anyone in MMA, and his ability to finish off wounded opponents is similar to that of VitorBelfort.
The issue is that Hall picks his strikes very, very carefully. If he doesn’t see an opening for a punch or kick, he won’t throw anything. Is that smart? That’s debatable, because he has fought so tentatively at times that he has dropped decisions to mediocre fighters such as John Howard and Rafael Natal.
Fresh off a win over GegardMousasi, however, Hall finds himself in an all-or-nothing position. If he wins—and wins big—he will cement a place in the top 10 and may be one or two fights away from a title shot.
If he loses, that win over Mousasi will suddenly seem like a big fluke, and if Saturday’s fight is a snoozer, Hall will be back to square one.
Mark Hunt
Mark Hunt is one of the greatest fan favorites in recent UFC history. Heck, he is undeniably the people’s champion in the heavyweight division. With that said, he has not looked good lately.
Hunt is 1-3-1 over his last five fights, and his draw against Antonio Silva in 2013 was something of a gift. Worse yet, those three losses have all come via brutal knockout, with his latest fight being so lopsided that it was difficult to watch.
No, this isn’t necessarily indicative of an end to Hunt’s career. All of those losses have come against studs, and even the draw came against a Bigfoot who was fueled by heaping helpings of synthetic testosterone.
However, even if he loses his rematch against Silva on Saturday, it’s unlikely that the UFC would cut Hunt because of his popularity and the number of promotions that would love to add him to their rosters (imagine Mark Hunt vs. Kimbo Slice!).
Still, Hunt can’t take many more losses and remain a credible fighter. At 41 years old, nobody would say he’s set to hit his stride or poised for a breakout performance. Hunt is at the point where every fight may be his last, and he needs to make the most out of the opportunities he has left.
Just because you know the destination doesn’t mean you can’t learn from the journey.
And the journey we’re about to take is through a little place we like to call “history.”
Ronda Rousey is the best female MMA fighter to ever walk the planet. She…
Just because you know the destination doesn’t mean you can’t learn from the journey.
And the journey we’re about to take is through a little place we like to call “history.”
Ronda Rousey is the best female MMA fighter to ever walk the planet. She’ll have a chance to further hone that reputational blade this Saturday when she meets former boxing champion Holly Holm at UFC 193, going down from Melbourne, Australia.
Rousey’s the tops, but there’s a legion of elite female fighters, past and present, to discover. The sport is so new that it’s relatively easy to look back and see the bones of its construction, its founding legends, its inaugural champions. The old and new schools have each spawned magnificent fighters, while and well before Rousey became a household name.
Let us now rank and recognize some of those greats.
These are the 10 best female MMA fighters ever. They are listed based on records, accomplishments, their overall place in the sport, skills and average strength of opponent. The division presented in each slide is the weight class in which the fighter primarily competes or competed.
Disagree with any selections? Ah, never mind. I’m sure that won’t happen.
Jimmie Rivera def. Pedro Munhoz, split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
MatheusNicolau def. Bruno Korea, submission (Round 3, 3:27)
Next up? UFC 193 on Nov. 15.
It’s that time of the year again. Ronda Rousey is about to step back into the Octagon, and with that, Facebook timelines will explode. Twitter will be popping with celebrities feigning fight fandom. Water coolers will become crowded with chatter about maybe going to see the fights at (insert name of local bar here).
Rousey has turned UFC events into actual events. That’s something that hasn’t been seen since the days of Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell.
Oh, and there are plenty of other fights on the card as well. Uriah Hall vs. Robert Whittaker is a tantalizing middleweight fight that could have major Top 10 ramifications. Joanna Jedrzejczyk will look to get some of the rub off Ronda and has a perfect showcase matchup opposite Quebecois grappler Valerie Letourneau. Oh, and Mark Hunt vs. Antonio Silva 2!
So what’s worth talking about over the next week? Read on and find out.
What makes you think you can beat Ronda Rousey?
It may be wrapped up with niceties and specifics and endless permutations of phrasing, but that is the core of the question Holly Holm receives, over and over again.
With UFC 193 and Holm’s date with Rous…
What makes you think you can beat Ronda Rousey?
It may be wrapped up with niceties and specifics and endless permutations of phrasing, but that is the core of the question Holly Holm receives, over and over again.
With UFC 193 and Holm‘s date with Rousey approaching, the questioning is hitting overdrive. During a media conference call Thursday that was joined by Bleacher Report MMA, Holm gamely (if wearily) answered the question as often as it was asked, discussing her own style, her own preparation and her own chances to dethrone the seemingly undethronable UFC women’s bantamweight champion.
Making the scrutiny even more intense was the fact that Rousey was not present as scheduled for any of the call, failing to answer even a single question because of what call organizers said were “technical difficulties.”
That left Holm to face the proverbial firing squad alone.
But she was up to the challenge. There are bigger challenges to come than some conference call, but Thursday may indicate that Holm is remaining poised in the crucible of low expectations and the hardest fight of her career.
“Every style makes a difference. Every fight makes a difference,” Holm said during the call. “And I think that I can do it. Girls get in there with her and they put her high up on a pedestal. They forget they’re in there for a reason. I’m in there for a reason.”
According to odds posted on Odds Shark, Holm is anywhere from +825 to +1100 to pull what would be a shocking upset on November 15. With those long numbers, it becomes almost literally true that no one is giving her a chance. And Holm knows this.
Holm also knows that she was selected for more than her blondeness. A former world champion boxer, the 34-year-old is 9-0 since switching to pro MMA. She has yet to look amazing in her two bouts for the UFC but managed to notch a win on each occasion.
When discussing her Rousey-beating ability, Holm draws on her boxing experience.
“I’ve been the underdog more than once, and that’s fine with me,” Holm said. “A couple years ago, I got knocked out by [Anne Sophie] Mathis. She hadn’t lost in 17 years, and she knocked me out, and people thought I was crazy for taking that rematch. Those times are when the victories are even better.”
What Holm left unsaid is that she defeated Mathis by decision in the rematch. Will that kind of scenario play out against Rousey? Most people are betting against it, due mainly to the fact that Holm lacks the ground game and knockout power to, respectively, resist Rousey on the ground or end the fight in a flash.
But of course, Holm said she has been working on those parts of her game. Helping her along in that regard is one of the best teams in the sport: coaches Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, and training partners like a certain Jon Jones.
“He might just come to my mitt session and talk about my fighting style,” Holm said of Jones. “He’s got a good mind for fighting.”
Holm also notes that she has been working on her mat game, although without sacrificing a focus on the skill set that got her this far.
“Of course I’ve been working on [grappling],” Holm said. “I think it would be a really dumb mistake to not…I know she’s not afraid to stand up…I’m very aware of that…Yes, we look at what she does well, but we also want to capitalize on the things I do well.”
As the questions finally wound down, Holm never strayed off message. Though she acknowledged and almost even embraced the difficulty of the task in front of her, she also maintained that she has the tools to win. If the improbable happens on November 15, no one can accuse Holm of losing faith, even if everyone else seemed to.
“She hasn’t been beaten yet,” Holm said, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more, follow Scott on Twitter. All quotes obtained firsthand.
Holly Holm certainly has the ability to beat