Tag: ronda rousey

The Kick that ended Ronda Rousey’s reign in the UFC

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Ronda Rousey has fallen. After vanquishing her last three opponents inside 64 seconds, Rousey lost her first match in MMA and UFC inside six minutes. She didn’t just lose. She got knocked out. Cold. It was brutal to watch and mesmerizing at the same time. Shock, awe, and sadness all in one beautifully landed Holly Holm kick to Ronda’s neck that ended it. Watching it live, I tried to imagine what people thought when Mike Tyson was knocked out by Buster Douglas. UFC 193 was the home of the greatest upset of all time. Something nobody will forget. Where were you the night Ronda Rousey got knocked out?

I could see it coming. Small hints. I wrote hours before the fight that Rousey seemed rattled at the weigh in and overly tense. She is always an emotional battlefield of open wounds, but this was different. She sounded like somebody who wasn’t holding the crown. She sounded worried. Who was this tall, sweet talking and well natured challenger nicknamed the Preacher’s Daughter? Holm was unlike anything Rousey had faced before. A fighter with an excellent stand up strike game and a tall and muscular build to withstand attacks and make someone think twice about coming after her. Holm was a different specimen than Ronda’s usual opponents. With few threats or words, Holm was inside Ronda’s head before the fight night began.

Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm
Paul Crock/Getty Images

Once the opening bell sounded and 30 seconds passed, Ronda seemed off her game. She wanted to jump in quick and end it but she didn’t know how. Holm wasn’t backing up or giving an open lane inside. After a minute passed, Ronda seemed even more lost. Holm landed flush shot after flush shot straight to the face of the champ. Rousey’s defense was gone. She was desperate in the first round and Holm was taking advantage. Rousey took Holm down and tried to do an armbar hold and Holm broke out of it with ease. It was sloppy and easy to escape from. Holm took down Ronda but immediately got up, knowing the ground wasn’t her best chance to take the title. Ronda got back up and barely escaped the first round. She had no legs. No energy. No clue. Fight fans wondered who they were looking at. Who was this mortal person in the ring?

Rousey sat in her corner, looking as shocked as the rest of us. She didn’t know who was standing in front of her but her face suddenly recognized pain and how adversity felt. For the first time, Rousey was bleeding and her opponent was not.

The second round didn’t even get a minute old before Rousey was finished. She missed with a few shots and Holm landed a few flush shots to the face before Rousey tried to charge and fell in doing so. When she got back up, she missed with another shot, got tagged and stumbled to the ground. Before she could get up and turn around, Holm landed the perfect leg to the neck and face. The strike numbed Rousey’s moment and the rest of her night, all at once. Rousey fell to the ground like a lump of bricks. You know that limp nothing look to a fighter’s body when they get caught with the perfect shot? That was Rousey. She landed, and Holm got on top, landing two more sideway shots to the champ’s face, literally knocking the undefeated record from her body. With one fall, the monument that Rousey built was gone. The “And still” anthem was put on hold and a new sound was heard, “And NEWWWWW!!!”

Holm immediately jump up in and ran to the side of the ring, unleashing the biggest smile this world will see this weekend. She did it. She did the impossible. The unthinkable. After eight weeks of being told no way, Holm screamed back at the world, “WAY!!”. She didn’t just defeat Ronda Rousey. She defeated the hype machine and world conquering name and face of a legion of young women fighters. Now young girls can look up to two female fighters and not just one. The whole world will know the name Holly Holm by Monday morning. It will be in every punch line, water cooler conversation and phone screen. The image of her leg landing on Rousey’s neck will be as memorable as Juan Manuel Marquez sending Manny Pacquiao to the canvas with that thunderous right hook.

Will Ronda return? Sure she will. She is hungrier than ever now. Minutes after she was counted out, she sat on the canvas and realized what it was like to not win. That is all the motivation she will need to come back for a likely rematch against Holm. Every loss is only met by the sweet smell of revenge cooking around the corner. For now, celebrate Holm and her newfound fame. She earned every tweet, mention and headline that will involve her name over the holidays. She was a massive underdog coming into the fight and leaves Australia the champion of the world. As the great late St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Joaquin Andujar said, “You Never Know.”

In the world of sports, you never know what will happen. In the world of fighting, you never know what will happen when that bell dings and it’s time. There’s someone out there for everybody to lose to. It’s a matter of those two people meeting in a ring.

Saturday night, Ronda Rousey entered the ring as the undefeated champion and top name in the world of sports. Sunday morning, she will wake up defeated and without a belt with a chip on her shoulder. The larger than life star has fallen. What will she do when she wakes up? That is the beauty of sports. Every fall is followed by a reaction.

What are you prepared to do, Ronda?

While we are pondering that and the rematch is set up, take a moment and send some praise Holly Holm’s way. She shocked the world this weekend!

Is Ronda Rousey rattled by “sweet” Holly Holm?

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Some pre-fight banter before the lovely ladies battle at midnight.

During the Friday weigh in, I picked something up about Rouda Rousey. After Holly Holm came in at 134 pounds and Rousey stepped up smiling and matched the weight, there was a tense faceoff. This wasn’t the surprising part. This happens at every contest that is centered around ring combat. Fighters weigh in, smile, flex and then bark at the other fighter. Keep in mind the fighter has been starving their body for weeks so they are seriously just hungry. When the two ladies stood face to face, Rousey put a fist next to Holm’s face and she did the same, to the point of pushing Ronda away.

However, Rousey seemed like an isolated teenager when she was interviewed by Joe Rogan about the tense staredown. She sounded truly rattled and unnerved by the way Holm had acted throughout the camp. Holly is a quiet sweet tall muscular killer. She smiles right up to the moment when she snaps you in half. Is this on purpose? Is this Holly trying to get into Ronda’s head by not saying much? Rousey’s last opponent mocked her dad’s suicide and got crushed in 34 seconds. Holm isn’t doing that. She is unlike many of Rousey’s opponents. She is undefeated, tall and muscular. She is a specimen that will give Rousey trouble.

I was just surprised at the reaction from Rousey. She is an emotional woman and lets her words and tears fly. She is also a worldwide phenomenon. She is everywhere. After destroying Correia this summer, Rousey became even bigger around the world. A tough woman who has beaten her last three opponents in just over 64 seconds. She deserves the fame but is it finally getting to her? The commercials, the videos, the movies, the publicity and all of that getting to the most popular female in sports and in the world who just donned the cover of a boxing magazine. It’s a point to ponder as the pay per view event gets underway in Australia.

I’ve seen Rousey get emotional talking about anything but she seemed detached from her zone Friday evening at the weigh in. Holm was calm as a feather, saying she was just taking a drink and praising Rousey’s ability. She’s been sucking at the throne of Rousey this entire tour of publicity for the fight. She could be secretly ninja chopping Rousey on the inside.

The trainers for Holm have battled Rousey before and lost so there is history there. This could just be Ronda letting it all hang out before she goes off to film a pair of films before another fight. I wonder how much she wants to fight and how much she wants to make movies. She probably doesn’t mind not getting punched for real but I think there is a hunger inside her that is leaking out with this Holm fight.

I could be mistaken, but I think Holm pushes Ronda tonight. Holm is 9-0 in MMA and 2-0 in UFC with an overall professional fighting record of 33-2 but it’s the build of this woman and the quiet confidence that pushes me a little. Correia got into the ring and got punched and immediately got scared. I don’t see a bit of recklessness in Holm and that could help her last a round.

I still see Rousey winning this fight. I still her coming out on top. I just saw something Friday night from Rousey that was a little bizarre. I am not a fighter though.

Again, Rousey could have simply been hungry.

Ronda Rousey is the Role Model We Need

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hi-res-e0789e52e396bb0929872035117a0d31_crop_northSay hello to the toughest woman on the planet. Ronda Rousey is exactly the role model this world needs. She’s a 28 year old undefeated champion in MMA and the woman who made Dana White a believer that women belonged in the UFC. You may have heard of her. She beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. out for Fighter of the Year at the ESPY’s in July and taunted him about not knowing who she is, even challenging him to a fight(he won’t take it if he appreciates his health). Rousey is globally fearless and that’s why we should love her.

Sure, she gets into an octagon and fights other women in a brutal MMA sport; wrestling, kicking and punching towards more wins in the UFC. Don’t discount the woman because she’s a fighter though. For a world that gets swept up in the all American game of football every fall/winter that’s damaging men’s futures one tackle at a time, a woman fighting for her cash isn’t bad at all. If folks can pay millions to see a wife beating Mayweather Jr. dance around a ring like Houdini, Rousey’s wicked style of destruction should be digested smoothly.

When I think of Rousey, I think about He For She, the campaign Emma Watson started to drive the dagger home for men and women sharing equal rights and opportunity. Rousey is a role model not just for other fighters that are coming through the ranks, but she is also a beacon of light for every single woman on this planet. The ones that work an extra hour to get prepared and make themselves look pretty for this world that still wishes to beat them down on a daily basis. Rousey is the reminder that if you are very good at a job, you should get paid no matter what sex you are. She’s a renegade and someone who created her own success. That’s hot.

There are few more pressured packed jobs than that of a fighter. Think about it. You have to literally punch and grapple your way to victory and every ring meeting is a chance to damage your brain or lose a piece of your bone structure. One bad decision could be the end of your career or at least the painful beginning of the demise. The general perception is that fighters aren’t needed and I beg the differ. I don’t want think of a world without people who create their way of living by using their own two hands. As Jim Lampley once said, people play “fighting” for a living. You stand, you fight, and that’s it.

Rousey hasn’t been handed a thing in her life. She was a daddy’s girl as a young girl, learning how to swim to the point of where she got pretty good at it. The direction her life could have went if her dad didn’t tragically take his life after a debilitating injury zapped the life from him is the opposite direction of a fighter. She could have been diving off a board at the Olympics. Instead, her mother taught her how to fight.

Rousey’s mother knew a thing or two about it herself.  AnnMaria De Mars was the first American woman to win the World Judo Championship in 1984 and is a master in the martial art. So when Ronda was hanging around the lowest of lows, her mother took her to the gym and taught her the most authentic and simplest technique. The ability to knock someone else out when needed. Trust me, it was a better option than the salon or Starbucks.

After competing in the Olympics herself and taking home a medal, Rousey had to scrap around for a while. There isn’t a lot of money to go around the fight game until you find the right match or bust your butt training. Ronda lived in her car while she trained. Working far out of the spotlight while she collected the right training. Training that would eventually revolve around one single move. The arm bar. The act of strangling one’s arm on top of your knee while on the ground, where the arm is then bent the complete opposite direction that it wants to go. Many opponents have found the need to tap out before Rousey separates the arm into two pieces. It’s brutal but it doesn’t come without warning.

Rousey has won all 11 of her fights and most of them end in an instant. Rousey is the Mike Tyson of MMA. The sport wasn’t quite ready for her method of mayhem and they still have a hard time digesting a woman winning a fight in the same amount of time it takes you to make a video on Instragram.

It doesn’t hurt that she is gorgeous, curvy and built like a Mack Truck. That may turn certain people off, but for others it’s a welcome sight. A woman brandishing her skills and youthful powerful beauty in a ring instead of a man. The people who are intimidated by Rousey badly want to be as confident as her. They whisper to themselves after they denounce her in front of their friends, “man I wish I could be so fearless.” She’s graced movie screens, fighting alongside Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables and against Vin Diesel’s car heisting crew in Furious 7 this past spring. Soon, she will shoot a film with Mark Wahlberg. Unlike some crossover star athletes, Rousey doesn’t lose focus. It helps that she’s struck a good balance between a Tommy gun temper and supreme confidence.

Rousey also isn’t afraid to say what’s on her mind. She is a hot take quote machine, and never fails to shoot a journalist or opposing fighter straight. When an opponent tried to make a knock at her father, Rousey simply stated she has to make that woman suffer. Rousey can zing you with a jab or a one liner, and that only broadens her legend. People don’t just want a undefeated record with their fighters these days. They want a personality and Rousey’s is authentic, free spirited and quite direct.

A week ago, Rousey destroyed her latest victim, Bethe Correia, a Brazilian fighter in 34 seconds. The weakest fighters always throw the biggest punches outside the ring before shrinking inside the ring. When Rousey’s fist hit Correia’s nose, the only words uttered were “please stop”. I expected Correia to tap out, like I expect Jason Statham to win in the end of all his action films.

If Watson wanted to blaze a trail with her He For She campaign, she should let Rousey drive the chariot of fire. The woman is everywhere and here all at once, and she isn’t going anywhere.

Prepare to see a lot of Ronda Rousey. Just don’t make her mad. She is a beacon of light for a world of women fighting for equality every single day. I don’t have a hard time liking that. Do you?

Ronda Rousey “Tyson’s” Bethe Correia in 34 seconds

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ROUSEYShe came, she entered the ring, and she conquered! How would it be for someone to walk into your house and kick your butt in 34 seconds? That’s what Ronda Rousey did to Bethe Correia in Brazil earlier this morning. Rousey defended her UFC Bantamweight title and moved to 12-0 on a fight that didn’t start until after midnight here in Little Rock, Arkansas.

As I wrote for KSDK on Saturday afternoon, Rousey takes cares of her opponents like Mike Tyson used to knock out his opponents. Quickly and without mercy. It’s almost as if she has three arm, four legs, or a sixth sense in the ring because Correia seemed to have zero chance to breathe once Round 1 started. When the announcer said five rounds, I laughed at the notion of Rousey needing more than a minute to beat this latest opponent up.

Correia gave you reason to hate her, mocking Rousey’s relationship with her late father and telling people she would send the champ into depression with her first loss. Someone needs to tell that girl that dreams are best kept for video games and the real world, the stinky bloody Octagon, is where those dreams go to die. The Brazilian champ, padding her record by picking up the trash of Rousey’s past opponents, had no chance.  (more…)