MMA Fantasy: What if Ronda Rousey had stayed in the UFC and rematched Amanda Nunes?
Ronda Rousey is one of the greatest women's fighters in MMA history. For most of her UFC career, she was a trailblazer, breaking down doors for women all across the sport. At her peak, she was regarded as unstoppable by most, with UFC commentator Joe Rogan taking his praise of her to hyperbolic heights.
She reigned as the UFC women's bantamweight champion, racking up six title defenses, the second-most in the promotion's female divisions. Rousey finished every fight along the way, extending her undefeated record until her unbeaten run came to a screeching halt in the form of Holly Holm.
Worse still, she lost her subsequent bout to Amanda Nunes and retired from the sport thereafter. However, could things have gone differently had she stayed in the UFC and rematched 'The Lioness' or was her fate sealed?
Ronda Rousey's questionable redemption arc
Despite all of her concussion talk, Ronda Rousey's shortcomings inside the octagon stemmed from deeper reasons with strategic efficacy and tactical limitations. As legendary as her run was, she always had the same drawbacks, just not opponents skilled enough to capitalize until she and Holly Holm clashed.
Rousey's flaws were due to how she entered range. As an Olympic judoka, her goal is to enter the clinch and drag trip or toss her opponent to the mat, where her patented armbar has ended most of her wins. Unfortunately, she lacked the ability to enter range intelligently.
Check out Ronda Rousey's loss to Holly Holm:
First, Rousey did not step across her foe to cut off their angles of escape. Instead, she follows her opponent in a straight line, lunging into range with looping punches. Moreover, she does not move her head off the center-line, nor does she tuck her chin or keep her rear hand close to it as a shield.
In short, Rousey runs herself into counters, which meant that the mobile Holm, who moves laterally and throws sniping counterpunches down the middle, staggered her with shots every time she stepped into range. And when Rousey did manage to get into the clinch, Holm kept her elbows tucked to her midsection.
This deprived Rousey of a stray arm with which to drag her to the ground. After a round and 59 seconds of lunging into Holm's counters, Rousey was flattened by a head kick in one of the greatest upsets in UFC history. She vanished for a year, returning to face future GWOAT Amanda Nunes.
However, Rousey's same issues of storming recklessly into the clinch caused her to run into Nunes' straight power punches down the middle, leading to a first-round TKO. While she retired following the loss, in an alternate timeline she stayed in the sport. Unfortunately, the outcome would have been the same.
Check out Ronda Rousey's loss to Amanda Nunes:
Rousey's issues would have only been fixed had she changed camps and opened herself up to constructive criticism, which she has never been. Just recently, she hit out against Joe Rogan for the latter's past assessment of her shortcomings. Staying with Edmond Tarverdyan at Glendale would have led to nothing.
Tarverdyan has a low success rate as a coach, failing to produce an elite fighter outside of 'Rowdy.' He took Travis Browne and turned him from a bright heavyweight prospect to an objective failure. Similarly, he has done nothing of note with Edmen Shahbazyan, who is unranked and 2-4 in his last six fights.
Given Rousey's blind loyalty to Tarverdyan and inability to analyze her own limitations, she would have regarded any proposed solutions to her technical flaws as a personal attack and would stick with Glendale. So she would have plateaued and stayed the same.
So a rematch with Nunes would have gone exactly the same, with Rousey running herself into power punches en route to a TKO loss. She would not have regained her bantamweight strap. At most, she might have stuck around to face Cris Cyborg for a last-ditch super-fight. But the outcome would have been a loss.