Ronda Rousey can retire right now and there’s no questioning one thing: that she’s the greatest female fighter to ever step into a combat sports arena. At 9-0 with nine finishes, eight by armbar and one via TKO, Rousey has done what seemed to be impossible in bringing women’s MMA into the UFC. The fact that the UFC is adding a women’s strawweight division to its women’s bantamweight ranks, and devoting an entire season of “The Ultimate Fighter” to the new 115 lb class, tells you the depth of Rousey’s influence. Adding another women’s division as the UFC tells us that the “Ronda Rousey Show,” as some dubbed Rousey’s early inclusion into the UFC, is over and that WMMA is going to be a big fixture of the UFC palette.
She still has plenty left to do in the cage before she retires, most likely, and the fact that Gina Carano is being considered as a potential opponent for her, and that Holly Holm and Cris “Cyborg” Justino aren’t, tell you everything you need to know about what the UFC wants for Rousey at this point. They’re looking at her entertainment legacy, not her sports legacy. The PPV buyrate against Sara McMann, heavily hyped by Zuffa with Rousey being the “biggest star in the UFC, ever,” was not what was projected to be. It’s no coincidence that rumors of Rousey/Carano started flying out as soon as preliminary numbers for UFC 170 came in.
Rousey doesn’t have long for the MMA world, as her burgeoning film career looks to be on the verge of taking off, but right now she’s nowhere near the sort of star the UFC is selling her as. If she’s going to leave, or only fight once or twice a year while making films, they want her to have the UFC in the same rear mirror that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has the WWE. A fight with Carano makes an awful lot of sense from that perspective because it certainly makes no sense in any aspect from a competitive, sporting one. This is a money match in the same way Mayweather/Alvarez was; one that’ll generate a ton of interest but not be all that competitive.
Johnson elevates the WWE by association whenever he’s mentioned for a film he’s making. He was the next great action star, another generation’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, but you couldn’t mention him without mentioning his past as one of pro wrestling’s all-time greats. Johnson may have grossed more money with films in 2013 than any other star, at $1.3 billion, but he always mentions his past as a failed football player turned pro wrestler making less than a hundred dollars a night pursuing a dream. Johnson’s success as a film actor after so many other pro wrestlers failed, including the biggest of them all in Hulk Hogan, gives the WWE an elevation by association because of his success.
The Rock is an A-list actor in the making if not there already.
The UFC wants Rousey in this same spot as Johnson was in the WWE when he left to become a full time film star but right now Rousey isn’t nearly as big a star as Johnson was. The Carano fight represents her getting there in a much quicker fashion than she would by facing a slew of contenders like Cat Zingano, Alexis Davis and the like. UFC 170 proved everything you needed to know about Rousey’s star power right now.
McMann vs. Rousey had all the making of a big fight but didn’t get anywhere near the same press coverage as Rousey’s prior two fights in the UFC. For Liz Carmouche she was a novelty, the first women’s fight and a story for the ages. It was the female equivalent of Jackie Robinson breaking the color line. The second time she fought, a rematch with Miesha Tate following a season of coaching on “The Ultimate Fighter,” she contributed to one of the biggest cards in UFC history as the co-main event to Anderson Silva vs. Chris Weidman rematch. The third time she was an established star and the UFC’s proclamations of her as being the biggest ever, as laughable as they are in retrospect, and she managed to draw her worst PPV rate coupled with one of the worst box office gates at the Mandalay Bay for a UFC event in some time.
Carano/Rousey brings a palpable buzz back to Ronda Rousey when it comes to her MMA career. One imagines the buildup to this “dream fight” would be hilarious in plenty of ways but the casual sports fan, who powers the big buyrates of bigger PPV events, would think of this as some sort of big time event. There’d be a palpable buzz as the UFC sold it as one of the biggest fights of all time, ever, despite reality dictating that it’s more like a working actress who hasn’t fought in over five years facing off against a reigning world champion in what’ll be a quick (and vicious) beatdown.
Carano would be getting a remarkable payday to come back, telling you everything you need to know about what she perceives her acting career to be at this point.
This would be sold as the “Mayweather vs. De La Hoya” of women’s MMA, it’s most famous fighter against its best, with the usual hallmarks of UFC’s marketing strategy being broken out en masse. It’d get plenty of mainstream coverage, more curiosity than anything else, but it won’t be because of the sporting aspect of it. If Ronda Rousey and the UFC were concerned about her final legacy as a fighter they’d be interested in Justino in some aspect and Holm would be in the fold. Those are the last mountains for her to climb before she could walk away from the sport without any lingering questions.
Even without the Cyborg or Holm fights on her docket there aren’t real lingering questions about her career. She’s the best women’s fighter, ever, and there’s no one remotely in her league in that regard. A fight with either of those two, or both, represents what remains of cementing her sporting legacy as far as MMA is concerned. They represent the only woman we could of think as posing any sort of real challenge.
Alexi Davis, f.e, is a great fighter but there’s no real doubt that Rousey wouldn’t completely have her way with Davis in every aspect of the game. She could decide that she wants to work on her rubber guard technique and odds are Davis would tap at some point to an Eddie Bravo inspired submission. You can say the same of Zingano and the rest of the women’s division as well. They are all skilled and talented fighters, those who haven’t faced Rousey yet, but no one would have any sort of reasonable gambling odds.
Rousey has no real challenges left inside the UFC, hence why outside of it remains intriguing (and inside doesn’t).
A fight with Carano represents a chance to add to her entertainment legacy. It’s the chance for Rousey to have the sort of PPV buyrate the UFC thought she’d have against McMann, nothing more. It’s a chance to throw gasoline on the fire of Ronda Rousey’s star status. But it’s not about sport.
