Ronda Rousey at UFC 187 media day scrum
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Rousey needed only 14 seconds to get a straight arm-lock on Cat Zingano. This submission happened 2 seconds quicker than her KO of Alexis Davis in her previous fight. It was an amazing display of positional awareness and cunning use of what’s available to make the best of the situation. In the post-fight interview she brought up Holly Holm as a challenge from a high-level striker or Bethe Correia.
Holm was in an entertaining fight in her split-decision victory over a very game Raquel Pennington. She took the first two rounds according to my scoring and Raquel took the 3rd round with her knockdown of Holm. Though it was not a washout by any means because Pennington was competitive and moving forward throughout the bout. Pennington’s greatest successes came from infighting and getting close. As many expected, her best shot was to make it dirty and the fight reflected that.
The other name Ronda mentioned was undefeated Bethe Correia who was sitting ringside during the card. Bethe provides an interesting storyline as she’s taken out 2 of the 4 “horsewomen” that Ronda and her friends formed as an homage to the 4 horsemen of wrestling. She beat Jessamyn Duke by decision and finished Shayna Bazsler in her most recent outing.
Of interesting note, Ronda didn’t deign to utter Cris Cyborg’s name in her post-fight interview. Cyborg defended her Invicta FC Featherweight belt the previous night in LA as well and finished her opponent, Shannon Tweet, in 46 seconds by TKO. It was an impressive victory and did nothing to dampen talk of a potential meeting between the two most dominant forces in women’s MMA.
In a test cut to 135 for Cyborg, she said she was unable to make it without severely damaging her body which was backed up by Dana White. During the “Welcome to the Show” event, he mentioned that on the night of the fight Justino was said to be about 170 pounds. A 25-pound cut sounds intense already let alone a 35-pound cut. Big guys like the middleweight champ Chris Weidman had a well-publicized 30-pound cut before his short-notice Demian Maia fight, which noticeably affected his performance. Justino is not the size of Weidman and that weight coming off a smaller frame has “bad idea” written all over it.
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