1741

She won’t fight at 135. UFC highest weight class for women is 135. Why she’s not in UFC.

1742

Guess who bet on Holm at -750? Apparently the casinos got destroyed by people betting the long shot on Holm.

The reason they don’t stop the fights at the first good punch/kick that knocks someone down is that you never know what someone will recover from. I’ve seen plenty of fighters get kicked or punched, go down, then recover and pull their opponents down onto them, clinching up to catch their breath. Notice the ref stopped it the instant Holm followed up with a ground punch. Sometimes a fighter will be slow on that followup and give their opponent time to recover. You don’t want to stop it early, you need to wait for the fight to really be over, especially when the belt is on the line.

The place I was watching it at went crazy when Holm landed that kick. Absolutely nuts. Great fight.

1743

The idea is that the fight is stopped if a person stops fighting to defend themselves. It wasn’t quite clear at the moment after the kick whether Rousey was truly out for the count - if you watch MMA regularly, you know that people are pretty tough, and can drop like that and still be perfectly compos mentis and capable of keeping on fighting. It was only after no resistance was offered after the first couple of blows from Holm that he stopped the fight. He is one of the best refs out there.

The question of “brutality” is a tricky subject. For instance, just because there’s blood everywhere doesn’t mean anything actually bad has happened. Boxing gloves make it seem like boxing is more civilized, but the reality is that without gloves, hand and wrist injury is always a risk when you try to punch people’s bony skulls, so without gloves, fighters go for the head less (although when they do, it’s more bloody), and that in itself is an intrinsic measure of protection against serious brain injury; whereas with boxing gloves, boxers’ heads are getting pummmelled all day every day, but with less blood flowing.

So what’s actually more “brutal” and what’s actually more “civilized”? The illusion of safety with boxing gloves, leading to serious long-term brain injury, or bareknuckle, with buckets of blood streaming from what are, at the end of the day, merely cuts?

1744

This is totally true, as boxing gloves allow you to punch harder and more often, which leads to more repeated concussion causing head trauma.

Imagine if Ivan Drago was punching with his bare hands, he wouldn’t be able to hit with the same amount of repeated force.

Apollo Creed would still be alive today.

1745

Yeah, that was a good stop. Any sooner and the Rousey camp would have been screaming.

Man, Rousey came out flat. Few takedown attempts, no opportunism when the fight was briefly on the ground. Either she had a bad training camp, wasn’t taking Holm seriously, or convinced herself she was a striker after beating up her last opponent instead of going for the arm bar right away.

1746

I’ve watched enough boxing to know that most cuts to the face look worse than they actually are, so I am not too concerned about the blood.

Maybe because I watched it on screen, but I thought I saw Rousey went limp as she went down. Not just lost her balance, but out cold after the kick in the neck. It was lucky she went down on her shoulders and not head first.

I wonder how Rousey is doing now.

1747

Champions are usually given more leniency to recover after big hits. As noted above, it has happened a lot that fighters will go down but bounce right back up or tangle up their opponent and get their wits back. Sometimes - and i know this sounds ridiculous and terrible for a fighter’s health - they might be out as they’re going down and the bump from hitting the mat brings them back and their instincts to grab and hold keep them in the fight. As far as late stoppages go, it was hardly one of the more egregious ones in recent history (VERY brutal video along with NSFW commentary from guy behind the camera). I watch pretty much every fight, and that finish with extra hits I linked still makes me cringe. It, unfortunately, happens in this sport somewhat often. There’s a lot of pressure on referees and they catch major flak from fighters, fans, and (usually) giant asshole Dana White for stopping a fight early.

Physically I’m sure she’s fine. But based on all the interviews I’ve seen, her behavior on the UFC reality show, and her book, my non-educated fan opinion is Ronda has some real maturity issues and probably has a pretty serious anger problem as well. I really can’t imagine what’s going through her head after something like this. Losing certainly hurts her image, but to lose this badly where even non fans are noting that she looks like an amateur, has caused huge damage to her brand. She needs to bounce back and absolutely destroy Holm in the rematch. Hopefully she starts by dumping the loser of a coach she has and goes to a real camp.

1748

I tweeted this immediately before the fight but didn’t expect my statements to be so demonstrably validated, but all the talk about Ronda being “an athlete of a generation” and “we’ll never see anyone like her again” etc. was ludicrous - she’s a great fighter who has done amazing things to help develop women’s MMA, but her success and dominance is attributable to the immaturity of the sport and the fact that the 135lb weight class is unnatural for most female athletes - the UFC created their initial foray into women’s MMA entirely around her. The lighter weight class hasn’t been around as long in the UFC and yet already has far more competitive depth.

Women’s MMA is rapidly evolving and as it gains popularity it’ll attract better and more diverse and more well-rounded talent, in the same way that men’s MMA did in the 90s and continues to, as we now have athletes who have grown up with the sport and so they’ve trained in all of its fundamental aspects (striking/wrestling/BJJ) from the outset of their training, as well as reincorporating abilities from other martial arts that were largely forlorn after the initial circus fight era because they weren’t as essential as the core arts. The difference in women’s MMA between 3 years ago and now is already incredible. We’ve gone from very one-dimensional fighters and an over-emphasis on certain techniques to much more dynamic and technically diverse and skilled competitors.

The Holm fight was very much a Buster Douglas moment, where an aggressive champion was picked apart by a larger fighter who was able to effectively attack from range – Ronda didn’t just lose, she had the weakness of her technical striking badly exposed after she was unable to bully and grapple an opponent who was physically strong enough and smart enough to keep her distance or to reestablish it when Ronda was able to get her hands on Holm.

1749

I think, after Brazil, Rhonda figured she could just absorb anything that a female striker threw at her. In this case, she was wrong, completely. It’s almost like she started believing the “no one can beat Rhonda” hype and didn’t bother preparing for her opponent. Her and the trainers should have known everything they needed to know about Holm and had a gameplan for it. Instead it felt like she was saying “it’s cool, I’ll just do what I’ve done against other strikers”.

As for the unbeatable hype, I blame that on the UFC publicity engine. After being 12-0 and winning most of her fights in quick fashion, people started asking “can anyone beat this person?”. The UFC loves that. She was on talk shows. She was doing movies. She is in Reebok commercials. Every time someone sees her, it’s a free plug for the UFC, so they kept pushing the narrative. It doesn’t hurt that she cleans up nicely. They are doing the same thing with Conner McGregor. He knows how to talk, knows how to fight, and knows how to dress. After he was only 5-0, the UFC was out there talking about how amazing he is and how you really need to see this amazing beast at the next UFC PPV.

The UFC wants a Mike Tyson or a Manny P. Someone that will bring in the swarms of fans. A lot of the good fighters just don’t have the personal relations chops to help push the sport. That’s why when a Conner or a Rhonda comes along, they get sent on the publicity circuit as quickly as they can.

1750

Completely agree, well said.

1751

I was starting to figure when Ronda’s hubris would catch up with her, much like Anderson Silva’s did.

Make no mistake - I am really awed at Ronda’s instincts and some of her earlier matches were just magical to watch, but the talk and the attitude were really starting to turn me off her.

1752

The one thing I like about the UFC is they don’t hide their champs. No bullshit like boxing with Mayweather and his cronies picking who he fights. Outside of the occasional lame fight like Chael Sonnen vs Jon Jones their matchmakers try to put the big fights if they opportunity happens. McGregor for all the hype will have to really finally deliver when he goes against Aldo. He will either be exposed or if he wins could replace Ronda as the face of the UFC.

1753

I just want to rebutt a few things that are thrown around. Not to completely disagree necessarily but to round out the discussion.

Without a doubt the Ronda Rousey most people ‘know’ is the persona being groomed through UFC; that of an indomitable champion with disdain for her opposition. In lots of sports but moreso boxing and martial arts, fans love their champs or they love to hate them. But as her fame has grown, rather than become a media monster or darling Ronda has done, I think, an incredible job of keeping her own head on her shoulders. She has used her 15 minutes to take some important stands for women; a sort of athletic Jennifer Lawrence. She also, I feel, really comes across as a well-rounded and genuine human being in interviews that I have heard. Finally, in no way should her taking movie deals be seen as some sort of cop out. The men in UFC don’t really make all that much money compared to other athletes and the women far less than that. The world doesn’t love you forever; take the money and run, absolutely.

1754

Conor just out-Ronda’d Ronda. 13 seconds and one punch to finish.

The Rockhold-Weidman fight really brought the crowd up to a simmer and then the main event had everyone saying what just happened?

1755

I was super disappointed with the main event. Not that I minded the outcome, but I wish they actually… you know… fought. I did enjoy the rest of the card, though.

1756

Looks very likely Rousey will fight Holm for a rematch in Vegas at the MGM Grand’s brand new arena on July 9. UFC 200, a historic one.

1757

194 was really good overall.

1758

Main card was the best of the year, for sure. 5 very interesting fights, including 2 title fights that were much anticipated. Great night of fights. Was rooting for Rockhold and Conor, but wasn’t confident that they could pull it off, as I still felt Conor was largely untested against top tier competition and Weidman has made some great fighters look bad.

Really hope that we get a Conor/Edgar fight instead of an Aldo rematch right away - I think that one is really interesting, potentially.

1759

This time around, I thought Weidman looked bad. His footwork wasn’t crisp, and he seemed to have no real game plan other than try to get to the ground. And getting to the ground went very, very badly for him.

And McGregor, damn. Wasn’t a long satisfying fight, but I remember back in the 80’s watching Tyson take guys out like that. One of those “I was there” moments.

1760

That seems like the most likely outcome, unless Conor decides to be stupid and immediately go up to 155. Of course that leaves Dana White in the awkward position of having to explain why Ronda Rousey gets an immediate rematch, but the even-more-dominant Jose Aldo doesn’t.