Does Ronda Rousey's win over Sarak Kaufman show...

I wouldn't mind seeing a fight with Sara McMann. She hasn't been too impressive, but she is unbeaten, and is an Olympic silver medalist in freestyle wrestling. Olympian vs. Olympian is a good angle.

 

Yes, fighters are training to defend those techniques but the trick is that the other fighters are training to apply them.

Does the fact Palhares Heel Hooks professional fighters constantly signify just how weak MMA is? No, he's just that adept at doing it and when you truly get into the nuances of BJJ it really is so intricate that even a good black belt can't always defend themselves even when they know what is coming.

This isn't a revelation, it's common knowledge to those who train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

 

A big difference in Palhares and Rousey is that Rousey specializes in throwing, or tripping, her opponent to the mat. Rousey puts her opponent on the mat, gets in position, and goes for her move.

Check out this video, and her working with Nick Diaz: http://www.strikeforce.com/media/SF3-all-access-ep2 It's around a 1min and 30 sec into it.

Palhares also has a poor defense for strikes on the ground, and that is what has cost him in a few of his mma bouts. His submissions are top notch. He heel hooked 3 fighters in a row in his last ADCC, and made it all the way to the finals where he was outpointed by Galvao.

 

Thats because Rousey is one of the, if not the best female Judoka in the world...

 

Which is my point. Palhares is not a world class judoka, or wrestler. He knows how to execute take downs, but he will not pursue them nearly as aggressively as a wrestler or judoka.

 

This is almost like the 'Wilt Chamberlain vs his competition' debate. I think she's just too good for these girls. They have more or less the same access to training like Ronda. It's not her fault she utilized her resources more and earlier than her competition.

 

^^what he said.

 

The first lady who forces a fist fight with Ronda and avoids the clinch is going to give Ronda her first challenging fight.

Right now, she's just incredibly good in the clinch because she has all the tell tale abilities of a good Judoka (male or female) in terms of her balance, power, understanding and timing. You can see she's put a ton of time into that armbar, she shows impressive strength and dexterity on the ground. Problem is going to be when someone finally is able to neutralize her clinch and force her to strike

In my eyes she's an incredible ground fighter who probably has some serious holes in her game in terms of striking. Meisha Tate is a good rematch, but really I think Ronda's grappling is THAT good that she will be able to just rely on it for now. Remains to be seen whether she can deal with someone like Cyborg.

Ronda is a little cocky lately, maybe it's just all the exposure, always really liked her.

 

I think it shows more of what kind of a real talent Rousey is. Really hope they can make a fight between her and Cyborg.

 

Ronda is really that good. She is elevating the sport to another level in Womens MMA. Someone will come around and eventually beat her but for right now she is the one with the stronger mindset, skill set and champion genetics. Being an Olympian Judoka and surronding yourself with some the best trainers ever allso completes this very talented athlete.

 

I'd buy that she's the best in mma right now, but given that she was a bronze and not a gold, I don't know that she was ever even the best in her weight class. We now have a gold medal winning judo chick a couple of weight classes above her, so it seems she's not even the best American judoka nowadays.

Anyway, I think she's figured out how to do her one trick really really well. Once someone can put her off of that we'll see what else she has, if anything.

 

If Gina Carano can fully mount Cyborg twice, I don't see Ronda having much of an issue.

 

About the same that Mike Tyson's 91 second KO of Michael Spinks showed that heavyweight boxing was underdeveloped. Rousey is just that far ahead of the pack right now. It will take a fighter like a Carano or Cyborg to give her a decent challenge at this point.