Amanda Nunes Smashes Ronda Rousey at UFC 207
In the end, it took just 48 seconds for UFC bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes to end the Legend of Ronda Rousey at UFC 207 in Las Vegas.
Rousey put up little resistance as Nunes blasted her with jabs and right hands from the start of the fight, Rousey’s first bout since her shocking knockout loss to Holly Holm last November. Questions abounded as to how Rousey would handle the psychological damage of the Holm loss and her prolonged absence from the Octagon. As it turns out, Rousey should have probably stayed out of the cage and stuck to making movies.
From the outset Rousey seemed uncertain, like she wanted no part of the champion, backing up and holding up her hands ineffectually as Nunes punched through her guard. Rousey looked more like a novice boxer sparring for the first time than an Olympic judo champion and the greatest female mixed martial artist of all time.
The champion sensed Rousey’s weakness immediately, marching forward with her hands down and launching every punch with bad intentions. Nunes landed several strong jabs and followed each with a hard right hand. Once the first big right landed and sent Rousey staggering backwards, it was only a matter of time before the result was official.
A series of hard punches rocked Rousey and left her clutching the cage to stay upright, as referee Herb Dean stepped in to stop the contest after less than a minute. Nunes stalked off in triumph, as fans and social media erupted in a mixture of shock and Schadenfreude.
It would be foolish to write Rousey off completely after these two losses. After all, as our site’s motto says, styles make fights. Rousey’s aura of invincibility was built by using her judo skills to take down a string of opponents and savagely break their arms. Her stand-up has never been on the same level as her ground game, and now she has been exposed two fights in a row. Whoever helped her gameplan for her past two fights should be fired.
Against Nunes, Rousey offered little in the way of takedowns, and only a few half-hearted front kicks. In truth, Rousey’s heart didn’t appear to be with her in the cage. As boxing fans know, sometimes a fighter’s first knockout loss can steal the courage that helps keep them alive in the ring. Without that sense of invulnerability, a fighter is just a person locked in a cage with someone trained to rip their head off. Any sane person would be terrified.
It would be a disservice to discount the role Nunes played in Rousey’s downfall. The champion has now won five fights in a row, all inside the distance, since her stoppage loss to Cat Zingano. While the UFC’s other female fighters may not have the crossover appeal of Rousey, they are consistently delivering exciting fights with unexpected results, which in the long-term should serve women’s MMA much better than a Laila Ali-type star without any real rivals.
It took $3 million to lure Rousey back into the octagon, tying Conor McGregor’s UFC record, and now that money seems poorly spent. The WME-IMG talent agency was banking heavily on the star power of both Rousey and McGregor when it coughed up $4 billion to buy the UFC in July. In the long term, it still feels like a smart investment, especially given the newfound viability of the women’s divisions. In the short-term, there will probably be a few less Pay Per View buys in 2017without Rousey at her best.
We never like to see a fighter leave on a note like this, but it’s difficult at this moment to make a strong case for Rousey returning to the octagon. She has lost twice in a row, in brutal fashion, and such knockouts leave imprints that last long after the fight. She is a global icon and her legacy is secure; money shouldn’t be a concern either after this purse.
Sure, Rousey is a competitor, and a large part of her will want to come back and re-establish her dominance. But she is also a month short of her 30th birthday, and fighters rarely improve with age, especially once they’ve started eating punches. I’d love to see Rousey win her title back with another armbar, but I’m fine if she doesn’t. Her contribution to the sport can’t be overstated. Better to leave intact, rather than endlessly chase a comeback like almost every boxer in history, to the detriment of her future health.
Ronda Rousey will be OK if this fight is her last, and so will the UFC. There is no guarantee that will be true if she takes another loss like this one. One way to avoid that if she does fight again would be taking the fight back to the ground, by choice next time, the way she did when she first became the Queen of the Octagon.
But if history is any indication, the Ronda Rousey we used to see is never coming back.
