I don’t know who the guy is. Rousey looks like she was trained in the ju jitsu or judo style of punching, which is rather conservative and not well integrated with defense. I saw her punching in practice and a little bit in fights and she clearly does not get it. From the snippets online it’s clear Holm knew exactly how to move to avoid Ronda’s punch and plant her own fist right in Ronda’s face. Ronda moves straight forward when she punches, leaves her arm extended (she oughta know not to do that as an armbar specialist), and she has no movement following the punch to protect herself from a counter-punch. Untrained punchers in MMA hitting each other is nothing like a trained boxer going to work.
Jack Slack over at VICE’s Fightland has an excellent analysis of the fight.
In his opinion, the single largest factor was excellent footwork by Holm. He makes a good case, I think.
Eh, I agree footwork is why she was able to continue to strike Ronda, avoid being set up for a take down, and eventually knock Ronda out. A huge part of boxing is controlling the ring and footwork, cutting the ring off, being able to move in ways that disrupt your opponent’s gameplan. But I immediately kinda disagreed with the meat of the article when it said it wasn’t about athleticism. Footwork can be about athleticism, and in Holm’s case it was.
George Foreman had good footwork and good ring presence, but he wasn’t a quick or flighty fighter. Instead, he was a big bruiser who knew how to move guys around the ring. He knew how to make quicker more agile fighters “take two steps for his one”, and on those terms big George, not ever in the best cardio shape, could win a lot of fights. If he had to dance around the ring with a faster fighter he’d have been gassed early in all his fights and we wouldn’t know who he was, because he’d never have been a world champion and Olympian.
But Holm’s footwork isn’t akin to George’s for hers to work you do have to be in good shape, and she is. Ronda is in much worse shape than Holm and that contributed to why she was unable to disrupt Holly’s movement and game plan.
It’s also simplistic to say Ronda wasn’t trying to box with Holly, because honestly–she was. I get that she was probably at least hoping to set up a clinch, and did once, but if you really watch that fight she’s visibly frustrated and based on all the boxing matches and UFC fights I’ve seen I think she’s fighting frustrated after about halfway through the first round. Her imbecilic wild punches are part of this, at that point I think she honestly didn’t know what to do, she was confused and lost, and she had bad coaching telling her to keep doing what she was doing.
So, how about Holly Holm and Floyd Mayweather then?
I only briefly saw the weigh-in. It was Rousey who was the aggressor in that “scuffle”. Whatever happened once they came face to face im unsure of, but it was Rousey who stormed over like she was about to punch Holm’s lights out at the weigh-in.
This. Not only is it to get attention but it’s also to impose her will on opponents.
As I understand it, Rousey hooked her arm over Holm’s in an attempt to gain a more dominant position over Holm’s arm and in so doing wound up inadvertantly pulling Holm’s hand into her face, which she then played off as Holm’s doing.
Holly Holm agrees:
from Holly Holm opens up on Ronda Rousey, UFC 193 and her future
Yeah, if you watched Rousey’s little speech afterward the weigh in scuffle, it has all the aura of a professional wrestler who forgot his lines. She’s just not that good of an actress, and Holm had consistently been professional, polite, and complimentary toward Rousey.
Having seen more of the fight, I wonder if the second punch broke Rousey’s nose. We haven’t seen a catalog of injuries yet, other than the lip gash that White had fixed by the top plastic surgeon in Australia, so I don’t know what other damage was done. But the punch-drunk confusion and wind-sucking, as well as that beautiful bloom of red from eye-to-eye points to a broken nose.
Very clever move on RR’s part!
This reminds me…has anybody, other than myself, fallen asleep just thinking of the movie with her and Wahlberg? (sp)
Here’s an interesting behind the scenes video featuring post fight moments I haven’t seen anywhere before. Once family reactions are over, there are scenes of Ronda on her feet sharing a post fight hug with Holly Holm (1:12) and walking through the crowd back to her dressing room, along with scenes of Holly celebrating her victory. Frankly, Ronda looked better than I expected. It’s too bad these scenes weren’t made public shortly after the fight, it would have helped allay fears that some of us had for Ronda’s post fight well-being.
A tiny zombie appears:
This is Rousey’s analysis as well.
Don’t read the comments. Why are people jerks?