Former boxing champ Holly Holm knocked out Ronda Rousey at UFC 193 last night, serving a massive dose of comeuppance not only to Rousey, but also to the hype train which surrounded her, and extended far beyond the borders of the UFC and mixed martial arts alone.
One example of that is The Ring Magazine, “The Bible of Boxing” as it likes to remind us, putting Ronda Rousey, a female MMA fighter, on its cover. Now, if they wanted to shamelessly tie into the Rousey craze, they at least should have put Holm, the fighter with the legitimate, high-level and successful boxing background, on the cover instead.
But they put Rousey there, disrespecting the entire sport they are actually supposed to be covering. Golden Boy — which owns The Ring, mind you — then strangely released a UFC 193 promo video.
Meanwhile, Rousey and the UFC couldn’t keep Floyd Mayweather and boxing out of their mouths, either. It was a strange angle to take, and Rousey’s ego remained front and center. (As Kevin Iole rightly points out, Rousey’s loss is also actually a testament to what Mayweather has accomplished through his career).
She believed she could go seamlessly into the boxing world and dominate — another insult to actual female boxers — yet, she couldn’t even handle the stand-up game when it was brought inside the cage. Rousey refused to touch gloves at the start of the fight, further exposing herself as simply a bad sport, not to mention a one-dimensional fighter who was blinded by her own hypeand success.
Ronda Rousey has been over-hyped and oversold, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, even if the way it all came to fruition, that brutal Holm leg kick and domination through six minutes of fighting, was a shock. She was rightly called the most dominant female MMA fighter in history, and very, very wrongly called the most dominant fighter, and even the most dominant athlete, in the world.
I have little doubt that Rousey will return from this, and if she’s a true champion, she’ll go on to be perhaps better than ever. Hopefully she’ll learn from this dose of humility. But more importantly, hopefully the endless, mindless hype which has seeped into the boxing world has ended, and maybe even those who have perpetuated it have learned their own lesson, too.
