Ronda Rousey became many things after she was named Ultimate Fighting Championship's female bantamweight champion early in 2013 after the merger with rival promotion Strikeforce. She became invulnerable, a role model for young girls almost by default, she challenged Floyd Mayweather Jr., spoke against Donald Trump, released an autobiography, signed off on a movie about her life, played in The Expendables 3, Entourage and Furious 7, was rumored to play Dalton in an eventual Road House remake, it's fair to say she has become much more than a mixed martial arts fighter in our society.
She has become an invincible warrior princess, who seemingly could accomplish anything and redefine the boundaries of what women can do in fighting sports. She was a whopping -2,000 favorite against Holly Holm last Saturday. Yet, she lost. She didn't lost the way George St-Pierre lost against Matt Serra or the way Mike Tyson got himself TKO'ed against Buster Douglas. She wasn't a demotivated, out of shape champion. She didn't have a poor game plan. She got whooped by a fighters with a great fucking game plan, forever shattering the image of the invincible warrior princess we loved so much.
What the fuck happened and what does this mean?
We collectively lost all perspective on Ronda Rousey as a fighter and a human being. I know I did. You probably did. Dana White did and Ronda did a little bit too, although she was never as cocky as the media sold us to be (more on that later). During her twelve wins run, she became more Rocky Balboa than Georges St-Pierre to us. Her potential was only bound by the limits of our imagination and our imaginations went out of the rails extremely quick over the last few months, after she knocked out Bethe Correira in 34 seconds, last August.
She displayed improved boxing skills in that fight and since female mixed martial arts doesn't exactly have a deep pool of talent, we collectively started to lose our shit and imagined her next conquest would be boxing. Everybody hopped onboard with that idea, of course. She made the first page of freakin' Ring Magazine. Oscar De La Hoya showed interested in promoting her. Her own coach Edmond Tarverdyan, who's coaching high level boxers himself, said she was already good enough to face world champion boxers.
She fought one on Saturday and the results spoke for themselves.
This was crazy talk. We were sold a Ronda Rousey that she couldn't possibly live up to. No human could possibly live up to such insane expectations of shattering the barriers between martial arts and even sexes. She was so dominant against her own weight division that we started expecting crazy things out of her. Of course, what she did was super impressive, winning all these CHAMPIONSHIP fights under one minute, but in boxing - a sport that has about a century worth of historical perspective on mixed martial arts - an athlete who wins all his matches under a minute is not called dominant, but untested.
See, the reason why Ronda Rousey was so dominant is that she came from a different sports paradigm than eleven of her twelve first opponents. She was a bronze medalist in Judo in Beijing Olympic games as most of her opponents could only count on their mixed martial arts experience. A little boxing, a little Muay Thai, a little jiu-jitsu competition for sure, but Ronda had the experience, a different kind of discipline and perspective, not to mention she is a dominant athlete. The first time she fought someone with an elite sport background, it was wrestler Sara McMann and it turned Ronda's favor, but not with Holly Holm who was used to the circus of fight entertainment, who's been boxing champion for nine freakin' years and she was the one with a strong gameplan to beat Ronda.
What I'm trying to say here, is that there's a huge gap between the Ronda Rousey we're being sold in the media and the Ronda Rousey who fights in the cage. If you don't believe me, I invite you to listen to this two hours interview she gave on the Joe Rogan podcast, where she puts context on her most inflammatory remarks and public feuds. It's enlightening to discover that 140 character culture created a monster that doesn't really exist and that what made Ronda Rousey into that "cocky" character is that she's 1) very successful and 2) she's sometimes too honest for her own good with the media. We spent the last two years debating a Ronda Rousey that doesn't even exist on social media.
None of what we've fantasized matters once the cage door latches, though. You're alone facing someone who wants to tear your head off in front of a bloodthirsty crowd. Was Ronda overrated? Yes, but she faced a perception nobody could live up to and it plays with your mind. She was a legit champion, she was dominant and yet, she was oddly untested. Not her fault. Not her entourage's fault either. She was just before her time. She's always fought the best opposition possible, she was just in a class of her own before the Holly Holm fight. Now, untested people get beaten all the time, but I can't think of someone untested who got beaten and hurt when the stakes were so high.
I'm worried about the future of Ronda Rousey. I like her as a fighter and as a cultural phenomenon both. She has done a lot for female mixed martial arts and for female sports in general. When was the last time you paid pay-per-view money in order to watch female sports? Right. We loved her in an unhealthy way though. She became too big, too fast and she paid the price for it in front of the world. Ronda Rousey suffered unfair expectations from all of us and was thrown into the fire with a distorted perception of who she was as a fighter and a person.
Ronda is not dumb. She's not cocky. She wasn't even surrounded by the wrong people to some extent. Literally everybody thought she was an invincible fighting machine. It's easy to believe she was full of herself and celebrate her ''humbling" but I dare you to think straight about yourself when every day, everyone in your life gives you a distorted perception of who you are. You're going to start thinking weird, too. Author Harry Crews once said : "Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world. Either you can do it or you can't do it—you can't bullshit." Losing will be the turning point of Ronda Rousey's career. It will either make or break her legacy. It just sucks it had to happen in such a brutal and humiliating fashion.
See, the reason why Ronda Rousey was so dominant is that she came from a different sports paradigm than eleven of her twelve first opponents. She was a bronze medalist in Judo in Beijing Olympic games as most of her opponents could only count on their mixed martial arts experience. A little boxing, a little Muay Thai, a little jiu-jitsu competition for sure, but Ronda had the experience, a different kind of discipline and perspective, not to mention she is a dominant athlete. The first time she fought someone with an elite sport background, it was wrestler Sara McMann and it turned Ronda's favor, but not with Holly Holm who was used to the circus of fight entertainment, who's been boxing champion for nine freakin' years and she was the one with a strong gameplan to beat Ronda.
What I'm trying to say here, is that there's a huge gap between the Ronda Rousey we're being sold in the media and the Ronda Rousey who fights in the cage. If you don't believe me, I invite you to listen to this two hours interview she gave on the Joe Rogan podcast, where she puts context on her most inflammatory remarks and public feuds. It's enlightening to discover that 140 character culture created a monster that doesn't really exist and that what made Ronda Rousey into that "cocky" character is that she's 1) very successful and 2) she's sometimes too honest for her own good with the media. We spent the last two years debating a Ronda Rousey that doesn't even exist on social media.
Post-modern abstraction Ronda. Still beautiful.
None of what we've fantasized matters once the cage door latches, though. You're alone facing someone who wants to tear your head off in front of a bloodthirsty crowd. Was Ronda overrated? Yes, but she faced a perception nobody could live up to and it plays with your mind. She was a legit champion, she was dominant and yet, she was oddly untested. Not her fault. Not her entourage's fault either. She was just before her time. She's always fought the best opposition possible, she was just in a class of her own before the Holly Holm fight. Now, untested people get beaten all the time, but I can't think of someone untested who got beaten and hurt when the stakes were so high.
I'm worried about the future of Ronda Rousey. I like her as a fighter and as a cultural phenomenon both. She has done a lot for female mixed martial arts and for female sports in general. When was the last time you paid pay-per-view money in order to watch female sports? Right. We loved her in an unhealthy way though. She became too big, too fast and she paid the price for it in front of the world. Ronda Rousey suffered unfair expectations from all of us and was thrown into the fire with a distorted perception of who she was as a fighter and a person.
Ronda is not dumb. She's not cocky. She wasn't even surrounded by the wrong people to some extent. Literally everybody thought she was an invincible fighting machine. It's easy to believe she was full of herself and celebrate her ''humbling" but I dare you to think straight about yourself when every day, everyone in your life gives you a distorted perception of who you are. You're going to start thinking weird, too. Author Harry Crews once said : "Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world. Either you can do it or you can't do it—you can't bullshit." Losing will be the turning point of Ronda Rousey's career. It will either make or break her legacy. It just sucks it had to happen in such a brutal and humiliating fashion.
