Because we have never seen and will never again see anything like her.

August 4, 2015 1:23 PM

In just 34 seconds, MMA virtuoso Ronda Rousey defended her championship title by knocking out Bethe Correia this past Saturday. In 2015, the average duration was 600 seconds. Her entire 4 year undefeated career spans under half an hour.

But her outlier status doesn't stop there:

Submissions are down from about 45 percent of all fights in 2000 to 25 percent in 2015.5 That more fights end with a decision explains the longer fights, and could be a reflection of improving competitive parity in the sport. There are fewer instances of pros quickly pummeling their opponent.

But Rousey is an exception. She has won all her fights by a submission or KO. Rousey has won nine of her 11 fights with the “armbar” submission — a move where Rousey hyperextends her opponent’s elbow, causing excruciating pain and sometimes gruesome results.

In a Deadspin piece published before the fight, Greg Howard contextualizes Rousey's unique position in sports history (note: there are some unsettling details about joint dislocations in the section about her fight with Miesha Tate):

Mixed martial arts is still a young sport, only a couple of decades old. Women’s MMA is even younger than that, partly because of sexism that has led to questions about whether women can fight or should fight that are still being asked right now, today. As befits a sport in its infancy, it is changing and evolving at an alarming clip, it can be pretty shitty at its worst, and its best days are still way ahead of it. Many men who fought successfully in the UFC 15 and 10 and even five years ago are now seen as primitive martial artists who weren’t particularly good fighters or athletes, and the same goes for many women currently competing. It’s within this context that Ronda Rousey exists. She is noticeably stronger and faster, as well as quicker in both action and thought, than any woman fighting anywhere in the world today. More frighteningly, she’s vastly more skilled than any woman who has ever thrown hands. She looks literally decades ahead of her competition, and the effect is something like if LeBron James had somehow been transported backward through time to the Civil Rights-era NBA. But this is fighting, not basketball, and so all of Rousey’s advantages manifest themselves in jaw-dropping and jaw-droppingly violent ways.

Three years after winning the bronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Rousey made her professional MMA debut. Since then, she has fought 11 times, with nine of those fights taking place in Strikeforce and the UFC, the two promotions that boast the greatest female fighters in the sport. She remains undefeated, appears unbeatable, and has defended the 135-pound title six times in a career that spans just 25 minutes and two seconds. Rousey has finished every single fighter she has faced; only one of her opponents has made it out of the first round; and only four have made it out of the first minute of the first round. One of those four opponents is Sara McMann, who is notable for winning a silver medal in wrestling in the 2004 Olympics and is regarded as one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in women’s MMA. McMann lasted 66 seconds

posted by Ouverture (70 comments total)

The before and after gif from her last fight is especially ironic.
posted by Catblack at 1:32 PM on August 4, 2015 [17 favorites]

But her outlier status doesn't stop with fighting skills either, she really knows her pokemans.
posted by anti social order at 1:33 PM on August 4, 2015 [13 favorites]

I regret very few things in life, but not including those two links is definitely one of my bigger regrets.
posted by Ouverture at 1:36 PM on August 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

"don't make Ronda Rousey mad" should be sort of a life goal for everybody, really, but so many female MMA fighters decide they're going to "get in her head" and then they find out that when you do that all that happens is you get the shit kicked out of you
posted by mightygodking at 1:49 PM on August 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

I really want to like Rhonda Rousey - I was thrilled beyond all get-out when it was announced that women would be able to fight in UFC. She is an exceptionally talented athlete. But she keeps saying awful things and I'm having a hard time supporting her as a result - which leaves me feeling really conflicted.
posted by VioletU at 1:53 PM on August 4, 2015 [17 favorites]

There's a video on YouTube of Rousey hyperextending and breaking Miesha Tate's arm in a previous match. You can see the gif here. It looks really, really painful.
posted by zarq at 1:53 PM on August 4, 2015

If you're in the ring with her and haven't made her mad, I don't know if you would have a better shot of not getting the shit kicked out of you, honestly. Not that I think some of the stuff that Correia was saying was advisable.

I like that there exist professional fights that I can watch in their entirety as an animated gif.
posted by ODiV at 1:55 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ronda's the greatest and I think she's just getting started as a culture/media phenomenon.

She also Instagrammed my song a while back and I am shamelessly bragging about it to this day. (Plus I like to think of us as close friends now.)
posted by frenetic at 1:55 PM on August 4, 2015 [15 favorites]

But she keeps saying awful things and I'm having a hard time supporting her as a result - which leaves me feeling really conflicted.

Can you link to examples of these awful things? I'm curious if it's over-the-top trash talk, or actual anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic language.
posted by rocketman at 1:56 PM on August 4, 2015

She made some transphobic comments about that trans fighter's name who escapes me, something Fox?
posted by poffin boffin at 2:00 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Can you link to examples of these awful things? I'm curious if it's over-the-top trash talk, or actual anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic language.

Look up her rant about the "Do Nothing Bitch".
posted by srboisvert at 2:00 PM on August 4, 2015

This is the most recent thing.

It seems to be more crass (which I'm not surprised by when we're hearing from a professional arm-breaker) and ignorant than hateful, for whatever that's worth. She gets pronouns right!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:00 PM on August 4, 2015

The before and after gif from her last fight is especially ironic.

Correia should have known better than to taunt Rousey at the weigh-ins.
posted by zarq at 2:01 PM on August 4, 2015

just because someone gets the pronouns right doesn't mean they're absolved from critiques about their transmisogyny. and it's nice you want to give her the "ignorant" cover but she's pretty clear that she's "researched" her trash opinions about trans women.
posted by nadawi at 2:03 PM on August 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

From the linked article regarding Tate's arm:

Her arm was bending perversely the wrong way, and Rousey saw that she pulling on the joint was no longer effective, because the joint had already more or less exploded. So then she sat up, started pushing the arm the other way, and twisted. Rousey looked like she was trying to break apart a stubborn Buffalo wing.

posted by exogenous at 2:10 PM on August 4, 2015

I think it's fairly worthwhile to note that i've seen a lot of brouhaha over her shitty comments, and very little over the ridiculously trash talking and embarrassing comments a lot of dudes in MMA seem to make.

Like i don't think i've ever seen a bunch of sites like the ones covering those comments ever post anything about MMA dudes saying shitty stuff.

I don't know, maybe it's not, but it definitely feels like some weird higher standard. Like she's supposed to be doing better because she's not some brodude.
posted by emptythought at 2:11 PM on August 4, 2015 [18 favorites]

It's true, it doesn't absolve her from criticism. But I think in a sport where the contestants could be killed if their opponent gains a significant advantage, it's understandable to be wary.
posted by frenetic at 2:11 PM on August 4, 2015

The Rousey fight I really want to see.
posted by Metroid Baby at 2:13 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

just because someone gets the pronouns right doesn't mean they're absolved from critiques about their transmisogyny. and it's nice you want to give her the "ignorant" cover but she's pretty clear that she's "researched" her trash opinions about trans women.

Well, she claims to believe a thing that is objectively wrong...maybe I should go with her own preferred vocabulary and say "shitheaded." Anyway, you're right that being non-horrible about one thing is not a blanket pass on all aspects, and I'm sorry if I seemed to be arguing that it is.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:16 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Like i don't think i've ever seen a bunch of sites like the ones covering those comments ever post anything about MMA dudes saying shitty stuff.

her comments were made while reacting to the fallout for the transphobia exhibited by a male mma fighter and the mary sue article discusses this, so i disagree that it's something we don't bring up with regards to men. not to mention, joe rogan gets pulled up all the time about his continued transphobia.


But I think in a sport where the contestants could be killed if their opponent gains a significant advantage, it's understandable to be wary.

if she thinks fallon fox might kill her in the ring, that seems like a problem with the sport, not fallon fox.
posted by nadawi at 2:18 PM on August 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

But she keeps saying awful things and I'm having a hard time supporting her as a result - which leaves me feeling really conflicted.

Her job is to more-or-less literally break people. I would think saying awful things probably comes with the territory.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:37 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Correia should have known better than to taunt Rousey at the weigh-ins.

Unlikely to have changed the outcome, though. A post-fight interview had her complaining that she didn't end the match as quickly as she planned.
posted by vanar sena at 2:38 PM on August 4, 2015

Mod note: A few comments deleted. Let's skip going around the "MMA is bad" and "let's talk about male fighters she could fight" trees yet again; even though they're offered in sincerity, and nobody's doing anything wrong, still experience shows these both end up being thread-killing derails.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:42 PM on August 4, 2015 [9 favorites]

her comments were made while reacting to the fallout for the transphobia exhibited by a male mma fighter and the mary sue article discusses this, so i disagree that it's something we don't bring up with regards to men. not to mention, joe rogan gets pulled up all the time about his continued transphobia.

I guess it's just that even if we take this one incident, there's less than 2000 google results for his comments specifically and around 10k for her comments on what he said.

Most of the stuff about him sort of comes off as "shitty guy is shitty, more at 11" whereas a lot of the stuff about her is like "is this WOMAN not PROGRESSIVE ENOUGH?" and sort of reeks of the same rhetorical cudgel as black on black violence.

I don't know, maybe i'm just getting hung up on this, but the more i look in to this the more it seems like yet another case of people wanting to gotcha a woman for not being feminist enough because it's juicier and easier to talk about friendly fire or solidarity and the lack thereof than a dude being shitty.
posted by emptythought at 2:43 PM on August 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

MGK, the 'get in her head' thing is likely a strategy designed to keep the fight standing versus going to the ground. Presumably you have a better chance of winning a slug fest versus trying to out grapple the Olympic judo master. But we can all see how well (or not) that idea is turning out for her opponents.
posted by anti social order at 2:45 PM on August 4, 2015

articles from a quick google just about mitrione's transphobia, from what i assume you mean when you say "a bunch of sites like the ones covering those comments".

huffpo
glaad
the advocate
the frisky
hollywood life

i am very open to the argument that women's feminism is policed more than men's - this is undoubtedly true - but the specifics in this case mean that rousey's comments matter more than mitrione's for a whole host of reasons. for instance, rousey is a potential competitor of fallon's and mitrione's not, it seems to make sense that more weight is put on rousey's comments. also rousey is way more popular than mitrione so it further makes sense that she'll get more column inches.
posted by nadawi at 2:49 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

the more i look in to this the more it seems like yet another case of people wanting to gotcha a woman for not being feminist enough because it's juicier and easier to talk about friendly fire or solidarity and the lack thereof than a dude being shitty.

here are my steps to being interested in this:

- a thing is happening (MMA) but i don't really care about it
- a thing is happening and a woman is extremely fucking good at it and now i am interested in this one woman who is extremely fucking good at a thing that i don't really care about
- this woman has said some shitty/thoughtless/uneducated things and that's upsetting to me and i am less interested in this woman who is really fucking good a thing i don't really care about

really though i shouldn't have to pretend to care about men doing a thing in order to care about a woman doing a thing. why do i need to study the history of male MMA fighters saying shitty things.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:53 PM on August 4, 2015 [29 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted. We've had a thread about Fallon Fox and where she fits into the sport and all that, and we're not going to repeat it here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:59 PM on August 4, 2015

I did enjoy the post match commentary along the lines of "Well you're known more for your submissions but you settled for punching her in the face a lot what brought that on?"
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 3:18 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

One would think that at $1.76 per sec for a total of $59.95 I'd feel ripped off by Direct TV. But it was worth every penny, in fact I think it was a bargain. It's not often you get to see a master practicing their craft, let alone one so far above and ahead of the rest of the field. It makes for a great demonstration of what the human body and mind is capable of.
posted by HappyHippo at 3:24 PM on August 4, 2015

Here's a fun data-filled FiveThirtyEight article on Ronda & MMA: Ronda Rousey Fights Like an Outlier.
posted by frenetic at 3:39 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I care more about Rhonda Rousey's transmisogyny than random people I've never heard of's transmisogyny because I continually see her praised as a badass in places I'm not expecting. I'm not trolling MMA forums, I'm just reading my feminist-leaning, well curated twitter feed, and bam, there's her name, and no mention of the fact she's hateful and bigoted. Cool role model. Cool being triggered randomly.
posted by Juliet Banana at 3:42 PM on August 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

...another case of people wanting to gotcha a woman for not being feminist enough

so uh the women in this thread criticizing her transmisogyny are the ones not being feminist enough then?
posted by griphus at 3:46 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

and sort of reeks of the same rhetorical cudgel as black on black violence.

I don't see that analogy at all. It's more like how the Black Twitter activists I follow are absolutely not shy about criticizing respectability politics or the erasure of women from some people's version of Black Lives Matter.

Doing good on one front is not a get out of jail free card for being shitty in other ways.
posted by kmz at 3:48 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

Mod note: Couple of comments deleted. We're not going to have a debate here about whether trans women should be allowed in women's sports. We've had that fight several times, we're not having it again in here; this thread is about Rousey, not Fox, and not the physiology of gender differences. If you have a question about a deletion, talk to us at the contact form, not in the thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:52 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ronda Rousey Fights Like an Outlier.

Ronda Rousey fights like a greased otter made of that Terminator 2 metal, is what they mean. I guess its good that she can KO an opponent in a standing fight too, but my God, on the mat she is simply superhuman, and it's spectacular to watch for the 14 seconds or so it typically lasts.
posted by The Bellman at 3:53 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Most of the stuff about him sort of comes off as "shitty guy is shitty, more at 11" whereas a lot of the stuff about her is like "is this WOMAN not PROGRESSIVE ENOUGH?" and sort of reeks of the same rhetorical cudgel as black on black violence.

"Not progressive enough!" is a real phenomenon but it's just because people have a tendency to be more critical of people they want to like. I don't know what the "but black on black violence" rhetoric - which is not a cudgel but a feint, an attempt to change the subject - has to do with this.
posted by atoxyl at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2015

I think Rousey is awesome in proving that a woman could kick more ass than pretty much any dude, but I reserve the right to be horrified that she is hella transphobic. Fallon Fox is more rad, anyway.
posted by Kitteh at 4:13 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am glad people brought up her transphobic statements; I wasn't aware of them.

For me, I see Rousey as an astonishing athlete who has said really transphobic things and hasn't acknowledged it. The latter doesn't cancel out the former and the former doesn't excuse the latter.
posted by Ouverture at 4:20 PM on August 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

That said her comments Fox are decidedly mild compared to the stuff you'll see from other people in the MMA culture so... yeah. It's okay not to want to be a fan yet.
posted by atoxyl at 4:26 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Rousey is amazing, and in 20 years when women's MMA is a mature sport, we're going to wonder how the stars of the day would do if they could have fought Rousey in her prime. She's doing a lot to kickstart the development of the sport, and it's as much her over-the-top persona outside the cage as it is her beastly performance in it. I wish she weren't so willing to trample other women to make it to the top (Cris "Cyborg" Justino is apparently an "it" after her PED use, she should fight Miesha Tate instead of Sarah Kaufman because she's hotter), but I can't say I'm super surprised given the general level of discourse in combat sports.

Funny enough, Fallon Fox has it down, I think:
"So [Rousey] got [the kind of socialization men get to be assertive, aggressive competitors, even if they're not fighters] from her mother, but then she acted as horrible as some men—not all men, but a lot of men—in the way she treats people, in her views on violence, or her views on competition. And she’s passing that on to other girls in this book. Assertiveness and aggression are tools that women need, of course. But there needs to be boundaries, empathy, and sympathy for oppressed people, or women will treat others as horribly as they were treated."
(from this interview, produced in part by MeFi's Own Susan Schorn)
posted by hollyholly at 5:28 PM on August 4, 2015 [14 favorites]

"Rousey said a few days ago that after Correia, she’ll fight Miesha Tate for the third time in her career. It makes sense." I'm impressed Tate wants another go.
posted by wrabbit at 6:05 PM on August 4, 2015

I have never once watched an MMA match and never will but nevertheless I still daydream about Ronda Rousey destroying that War Machine piece of shit.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:48 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sadly, turbid dahlia, since that War Machine piece of shit (and I agree) fights at 170, there's no way that'll ever happen. Rousey might mess up a male fighter in her weight class, but stepping up 35 pounds against a trained opponent is, well, unwise.
posted by uberchet at 7:55 PM on August 4, 2015

"Rousey said a few days ago that after Correia, she’ll fight Miesha Tate for the third time in her career. It makes sense." I'm impressed Tate wants another go.

It would take a lot of money to get me in the ring with Rousey. It would take an unimaginably large amount of money to make me do it three times.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:26 PM on August 4, 2015

I don't even care what she says, the fact that she can demolish everyone in the space of a gif makes her my hero. She's amazing.
posted by Xany at 8:27 PM on August 4, 2015

...fights at 170, there's no way that'll ever happen...

Oh, I know, I know, that's why it's a daydream!
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:42 PM on August 4, 2015

Here's a great piece from Jack Slack deconstructing Rousey's game and analyzing what it might take to beat her. What he says about her being like Royce Gracie in early UFC (and what that implies about the development of competition in the current womens division) really makes sense to me. She has highly specific elite level skills that no one she fights can match, and no has figured out how to deny her her strengths (or apply their own in the face of her strengths), but when someone does, the playing field will get more level in a hurry - she'll probably continue to dominate, but maybe her opponents will stop thinking it's a good idea to flail into a clinch with an Olympic judo player. I kind of suspect Miesha Tate will go--if not the distance--at least a round with footwork & kicks.

Whether anyone ever figures out how to manage space and walk Rousey around the ring or not, it's really entertaining to watch someone in any sport that's obviously working on another level from the competition.
posted by thedaniel at 12:44 AM on August 5, 2015 [10 favorites]

Ronda Rousey was an Olympic Medalist in Judo TEN YEARS AGO. Bethe Correia was a full-time accountant three years ago.

Are we really witnessing elite athletic competition here?
posted by ShutterBun at 8:08 AM on August 5, 2015

Rousey might mess up a male fighter in her weight class

No.

(that's about as clear as I can say it)
posted by ShutterBun at 8:11 AM on August 5, 2015

Correia should have known better than to taunt Rousey at the weigh-ins.

You have no idea how to promote a fight as a 10-1 underdog, do you?
posted by ShutterBun at 8:19 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

"(that's about as clear as I can say it)"

It's sure clear, but it's not super convincing. It's also almost certainly *wrong* to insist that she couldn't beat ANY 135 pound male fighters.
posted by uberchet at 8:47 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Are we really witnessing elite athletic competition here?

You're witnessing the closest thing you're going to get until Women's MMA is sustainable enough that more fighters are able to train full-time rather than keep a day job on the side. This will take a while, and I'm pretty sure everyone involved knows this. But history has shown that the rest of the world will likely catch up eventually. And in the meantime, it's still entertaining to watch how much Rousey has changed from fight to fight.

I expected Rousey to win, as did everyone not in Correia's camp. I was a bit surprised it was from strikes. I absolutely did not expect her to leave Correia so separated from her senses that her chin broke her fall.
posted by parliboy at 9:48 AM on August 5, 2015

Ronda Rousey Has Physics-Based Super Powers (Wired.com)
posted by zakur at 12:08 PM on August 5, 2015

Ronda Rousey was an Olympic Medalist in Judo TEN YEARS AGO. Bethe Correia was a full-time accountant three years ago.

every single nfl season there's a story about a guy who was selling insurance or cars full time who gets the call to pack it up and travel to cleveland or where ever to join the 53 man roster because someone tore an achilles. i don't think i've ever once heard anyone suggest that the full time day job they had last week is a reason to not consider them actual athletes competing in their sport.
posted by nadawi at 12:41 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

Yeah but that's men
posted by shakespeherian at 12:57 PM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

You have no idea how to promote a fight as a 10-1 underdog, do you?

That wasn't self-promotion. It was self-inflicted humiliation.

Ronda Rousey was an Olympic Medalist in Judo TEN YEARS AGO. Bethe Correia was a full-time accountant three years ago.

And Kurt Warner was once a stockboy at a Hy-Vee.
posted by zarq at 12:58 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here's a great piece from Jack Slack deconstructing Rousey's game and analyzing what it might take to beat her.

I love stuff like this even though I don't know enough personally to say how accurate it is. Fighting is for smart people!
posted by atoxyl at 4:02 PM on August 5, 2015

Jack Slack is one of the best fight analysts out there. I've been training in the martial arts for 34 years and I still learn something every time I read one of his articles.
posted by tdismukes at 7:27 PM on August 5, 2015

I was going to ask the other day since I don't follow MMA: is it considered staged like pro wrestling?

If all I had was that before/after gif to go by, I'd answer my own question. That was some ham-handed manufactured reality-show melodrama, right there.
posted by ctmf at 8:27 PM on August 5, 2015

I was going to ask the other day since I don't follow MMA: is it considered staged like pro wrestling?

The fights? No, and a 34 second fight is, like, the opposite of what pro wrestling does, except maybe to build up an invincible villain. Which, okay, maybe that is kind of how Rousey looks right now. But no, it's like boxing - the participants manufacture drama because it sells fights, there is absolutely wheeling and dealing that goes into which fights happen and how a champion's career is built, and one can't rule out the possibility of matchups thrown for money. But the fights themselves are supposed to be real.
posted by atoxyl at 1:28 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's not scripted is what I'm saying, but there are ways in which combat sports in general tend to be a bit of a shady business.
posted by atoxyl at 1:32 AM on August 6, 2015

i don't think i've ever once heard anyone suggest that the full time day job they had last week is a reason to not consider them actual athletes competing in their sport.

The point I was trying to make, but failed, is that Correa had basically never set foot in a gym until about 4 years ago, when Ronda was about to turn pro.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:26 AM on August 6, 2015

It's also almost certainly *wrong* to insist that she couldn't beat ANY 135 pound male fighters.

Anyone fighting at the UFC professional level? No, I don't think it's wrong. Granted, she could hit an early armbar so it's no TOTALLY out of the realm of possibility, but it would be dangerous and irresponsible to test that theory.

It's been tried before with one of the best female kickboxers of all time, fighting against a journeyman fighter in her same weight class. She ended up in a coma for over a week.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:31 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

here is 10 seconds of ronda rousey grappling some dude into a sad heap of tragedy
posted by poffin boffin at 9:52 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Holy cow, that was FAST.
posted by zarq at 10:12 AM on August 6, 2015

i mean really it looks like it's just some kid who maybe won a "get beat up by ronda rousey" raffle at a fair somewhere but yes, she is quick as hell. i'm not even that fast in video games.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:24 AM on August 6, 2015

"Granted, she could hit an early armbar so it's no TOTALLY out of the realm of possibility"

In the same post, ShutterBun, you seem to be saying both that you don't think she could beat any of the 135 pound men, but also that she might be able to pin one to submission.

Q.E.D., my friend.

Your kickboxing example would be more convincing with a cite, but even then it's trouble because MMA isn't kickboxing.
posted by uberchet at 10:30 AM on August 6, 2015

In the same post, ShutterBun, you seem to be saying both that you don't think she could beat any of the 135 pound men, but also that she might be able to pin one to submission.

I don't really see the contradiction. It's been pretty well established that anyone can beat anyone else at one time or another. It's not *100% impossible* that I could, say, beat an NHL goaltender on a breakaway. After all, all I have to do is shoot the puck in exactly the right place. But let's face it, it's not gonna happen.

Although she's recently showed more variety (winning by punches) as of late, there's no denying that the armbar is the key to Rousey's success. (9 of her 12 wins have been finished by armbar) In men's fighting, however, the armbar has been more or less abandoned. It was big in the early days of the UFC, but has since been more or less "solved." Obviously, this is not the case in the newer Women's division. Rousey's takedown ability combined with her ease of applying armbars against opponents unable to escape them makes for a great combination.

Anyway, our fan theories aside, there's a pretty good reason to stop arguing about how many male fighters Rousey could beat.

As for the kickboxing match I referred to earlier, it was Lucia Rijker (one of the best female fighters of all time) vs. Somchai Jaydee (an un-ranked 21 year old). Although she lasts until the second round, it's very clear from the outset that something is very, very wrong.
posted by ShutterBun at 12:40 AM on August 7, 2015

Bump on Adult Swim tonight played before the new Aqua Teen Forever episode:

[Card 1]
Tips for fighting Ronda Roussey[sic]

[Card 2]
TIP 1. Don't. What the hell are you doing? Just apologize and step back. Way back. Like out of the octagon back. Don't worry about your dignity, just leave that there, you don't need dignity. What you need are your arms. Preferably with the bones still on the inside.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:44 PM on August 9, 2015 [3 favorites]