Ronda Rousey

The mob mentality of fans never ceases to amaze me or prove my thought about the cult of fandom. Ninety-nine percent of all sports "fanatics" are putrid beings of flesh with the remaining 1% expressing the ability to view athletes as actual humans. Who knew?

We're a few months removed from Ronda Rousey's second consecutive defeat, and since this piece has been gestating in my brain from the Friday before the UFC Bantamweight title fight with champion Amanda Nunes...it's time to type. Let's just get this out-of-the-way early: Rousey defeated all the fighters that were placed in her path. She prevailed over every woman she was supposed to turn back on her way to becoming the biggest star in mixed martial arts. Now it can't be ignored how much of the UFC machine aided her upon her rise but she was the one that had to step into the Octagon and deliver. Zuffa couldn't manufacture that, she was tasked with stacking wins on top of one another. Alone. She entered the cage and had the door slam behind her. She fought. The world watched. She won.

"Overrated!"

"All hype and nothing else!"

"Brat!"

"Entitled!"

"Cocky!"

"One-dimensional!"

A few of the aforementioned labels are apt but not the ones you think. Overrated? No. All hype? No. Brat? Yes. Entitled? Maybe. Cocky? Isn't that a prerequisite in all sports, especially the individual ones? I think so. One-dimensional? No.

She's as dominant in judo as any fighter has ever been in their strongest discipline. Demian Maia is an uncanny jiu-jitsu practitioner, Anthony Pettis is a spectacular striker and Jon Jones is well, great everywhere, and I think he's an alien but you should be able to follow my path. There's a weird aura surrounding the sport of MMA and its competitors; when a fighter's dominance is based, primarily, in the grappling realm they are viewed and judged in a harsher manner than the exciting fighter, per se. Peculiar.

Holly Holm excels as a striker, yet - up to the recent present - she struggles with her takedown defense and aggressive striking (she's a classic counter-fighter; the sole reason I thought Rousey's forward marching, bullish, style could haunt her the longer the fight went). Additionally the game-plan, apparently was to trade with a decorated standup artist but there's no need to rehash that evening. Nunes is just as gifted in that aspect of martial arts and yet she's susceptible to gassing out. Are they one-dimensional as well? What about Maia? Pettis?

Rousey's problem was born from the fool's gold in the aftermath of her knockout of Bethe Correia. That evening doomed her. It was the worst result...and she won the bout. She made a successful title defense! It steeled her belief that she was a boxer, a true standup fighter; she had thoughts of being a high-level one. Or at least that was one of the subjects spewing from her trainer's mouth. Well, then she had to defend the title against Holm.

Holm and then Nunes; the outcomes are well-known at this point. While she made improvements in the striking arena leading up to the title defense against Holm, she clearly regressed in her devastating loss against Nunes. Where was her defense? "Head movement!" She would get tagged in some of her prior fights but she stood as straight as a pole and her head was an easy target in the one round she lasted against Nunes.

Unfortunately every fight begins on the feet. For Rousey that means she has to enter striking range in order to put her expertise to use. Her limited striking features no kicking to speak of and she doesn't employ traditional takedowns like doubles, singles, knee-taps, etc., so her head movement and creation of angles must be stellar. They aren't; at least not recently.

As for her legacy and impact: She met every challenge - until her last two outings - and was as dominant during that run as any athlete has ever been in any sport. There is no reasonable debate otherwise. Is she the most complete fighter? No. However, in my opinion, only Jones, Georges St-Pierre, Demetrious Johnson, Cris Cyborg, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Cain Velasquez, Daniel Cormier and Jose Aldo fit that description. Tyron Woodley, Max Holloway, Rory MacDonald, Tony Ferguson and Rafael dos Anjos are worthy of mention as well.

Is she the best female in MMA? No. I never thought she was - even at her apex. That title belongs to Cyborg. Period. It does speak to Rousey's gable grip on the sport and her excellence that respected members of MMA media picked her to win a long-rumored bout with Cyborg. Those journalists deserve to have their credentials torched. It was lazy then and it's preposterous now.

Is she great? Yes. That can't be deleted from her story. Holm and Nunes are the only two women that were able to topple her. (A legitimate argument can be raised that the third woman on that list is Rousey herself; at least mentally and emotionally.) The sports world and all of pop-culture screeched to a halt on those Saturday evenings when she competed and still remains the biggest crossover star under the UFC banner. She honored whatever the hell the ideal is of a <em>champion</em> in this peculiar time in MMA. She burst out to 12 victories - over four years - before her first loss. She won the title and actually defended her crown six times, event after event; didn't fail at weigh-ins and held up her media obligations to promote (with the exception of UFC 207).

Rankings, belts and champions - as far as MMA is concerned - matter as much as the interim title I recently drew on a piece of paper, crumbled into a ball, and threw for my dog in a game of fetch. She infused substance into those gold "UFC" letters slung around her waist. Her championship had true meaning; it was layered and respected.

Pride comes before the fall. That's the saying, right? I would add "Immense" to begin the statement as it pertains to the former champion. No, the former title holder. Hubris. In an interview leading up to her defense at UFC 193 where she was onstage with Jedrzejczyk, she answered a question by stating she could defeat the entire female bantamweight division with "one arm tied behind" her back. That was cringe-worthy.

Personally, I hope her last fight wasn't the final act of her athletic career, so to speak. I don't want it to end the way it seems like it has, presently. Naturally the mob is out to defecate on her achievements, and, over enough time I see her name drawing snickers. Hasn't it already?

Predictably, it's already begun. Its' unfortunate that she'll be remembered in a fashion unfit for the stature she earned within all of sport. If she's taken the cage for the last time, I'm positive that idiot fans will feel pleasure and their own form of personal satisfaction. They already do.

Whether she retires or not, I respect her time in MMA and all she accomplished. I wish her all the happiness and success in the world. She excelled in an arena where consistency is its own martial art.

It was a joy to watch her perform. Damn, I'm going to miss her walk to the cage.

(This article can also be viewed here).