In an interview promoting her new memoir, UFC legend Ronda Rousey claimed to be the greatest mixed martial arts fighter of all time.
And people certainly had some thoughts on the matter.
Rousey discussed fan reaction to her shocking loss to Holly Holm in the main event at UFC 193. She made a slew of excuses for the defeat, ranging from a “bad” mouthguard to a fall on the stairs and on to her weight loss at the time.
She said everyone felt that one fight made her a “fraud.” But she knows otherwise.
“I was out on my feet for the entire fight. I was trying to make it look like I wasn’t hurt, but I wasn’t there cognitively,” Rousey explained.
Added Rousey, “I couldn’t think as fast or judge distance. Just from that one fight, everybody felt like, ‘Oh she’s a fraud’.”
“I know that like I’m the greatest fighter that has ever lived, but when it got to a point that I had taken so much neurological damage that I couldn’t take it anymore, suddenly everything I had accomplished meant nothing,” she lamented.
— JustTheFights2 (@JustTheFights2) April 3, 2024
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Ronda Rousey – The Greatest?
Rousey may simply be reflecting on her mindset at the time of her fight with Holms. That stunning defeat coupled with a follow-up first-round TKO at the fists of Amanda Nunes in 2016 would seem to suggest she should have a different take on the ‘greatest of all time’ discussion currently.
“Then after the second fight, I saw how all these people I was coming back to fight for had suddenly turned against me. All of my appreciation for them turned to resentment,” she concluded.
It wasn’t simply the loss to Holms and then Nunes. It was the way it seemingly destroyed her entire killer instinct and nature. She went from unbeatable at the time to just another run-of-the-mill entrant on the card.
Before Holms, she fought 6 times in the UFC and won all 6 bouts. All of them were via knockout or submission. Multiple times she defeated her opponent in under 20 seconds.
She was on her way to becoming the greatest. Can she still be considered as such? Fans had some thoughts.
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Fans Take Some Shots
Needless to say, several fans politely disagreed with Ronda Rousey’s take on the greatest MMA fighter of all time.
“Yeah right. She was carrying herself like she was the next Mike Tyson until Amanda showed her,” one person writes on X.
5 years ago today, Holly Holm knocked out Ronda Rousey and shocked the world 🦵 💥pic.twitter.com/RQYy1shxeI
— Chamatkar Sandhu (@SandhuMMA) November 14, 2020
“Seems like she is still in denial that her window closed and she was never the same after that,” adds wrestling analyst Joey Klender.
“Sorry but no,” another chimed in. “You had your moment but for sure not the greatest fighter that has ever lived.”
Perhaps if she had simply responded to the adversity by giving her opponent credit, and then dedicating herself to a comeback, things could have been different.
Also having thoughts on the matter – Cris Cyborg, a Brazilian-American mixed martial artist and the current Bellator Women’s Featherweight Champion.
“Poor girl still suffering from CTE,” Cyborg fired back in response to Rousey. “I hope she finally got a good mouthguard.”
Ouch.
Rousey has been promoting her new book Our Fight, and actively trashing her former employer, the WWE, through various interviews.
She was unquestionably the first female star in UFC. But was she the greatest? You tell us.
