Rousey KO'd

[baffled]

Head kick and was a bloody mess before the KO.

[Holland Oates]

She had a bad game plan. Now we'll see how good she really is in the rematch. If there's a rematch.

[Protobuilder]

She's done a good job of building her brand over the past 24 months.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Rousey has a modern male MMA athlete's pedigree, and the women's division is extremely amateur by comparison. She's an A level grappler in a division of C & D level talent. She doesn't defend the head that well and striking will probably be a bigger deal on the women's side given the head vulnerability. Take somebody with 10+ years of striking, have Greg Jackson train her, and Rousey doesn't match up all that well.

Didn't see the fight yet, but this was exactly how you'd imagine she'd lose. Hard to buy the talk about game plan.

[Bram]

Holm fought beautifully.

I think Ronda's mental state going into this was as much a factor as anything: bizarre behavior at the weigh-ins, her mom publicly trashing her coach as being garbage, dating a (still-married) wife beater.

She looked nervous before the fight started and they were in the cage.

[Herv100]

A few months of proper wrestling training with my boy Izzy, and Holm took Rousey twice and easily defended her sloppy head and arm throws. I've been saying the whole time that Rouseys takedown game is 1A rural high school level.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Fight here:
http://weekendmma.blogspot.com.au/2015/ ... c-193.html

Greg Jackson is a helluva coach. Rousey had no real head defense.

[buckethead]

Spoiler alert

[TomFurman]

Her camp turned her into Bones Jones. Oblique kicks, taking down a takedown specialist [Like Bones did to DC], use of long range kicks and exploiting the southpaw advantage of the straight left. Ronda's 2nd round answer was to NOT square off and circle away from the power hand. It was to stay in that wide stance and turn sideways like old karate from the sixties.

Great coaching for Holly.
Bad coaching for Ronda. Prediction is she'll dump Dolce and her striking coach and pick up Duke Rufus. She'd be better spending six months in Holland at a striking gym.

[Kazuya Mishima]

Agree with everything Tom says. Spot on. To add to that.

Holm beat her ass with footwork and timing. She controlled the distance on the feet and always escaped on an angle when she needed to. Ronda just followed her around and had no clue how to cut angles or come at her from any direction except for right down the pipe. Holm's timing was impeccable. Once she got Ronda following her around, she just punished her with the rear hand. Shades of Floyd in how he controls the distance while irritating and scoring with the jab and the hook. Then, punishing and damaging with the rear hand once guys get tired of getting tagged and try to close. Ronda has zero head movement, and just doesn't see the shots coming. Ripe pickings for this type of strategy.

Underlying all of that was what appeared to me to be a gross mismatch in pure physicality. Holm looked like she was ready to step on the field and knock somebody on their ass in the Lingerie Football League. Ronda looked like she was a half dozen pies away from a casting shoot with Plumper Pass. Holm was longer, leaner, and more athletic. The fact she stuffed Ronda and picked her up tells me she was much stronger. This strength also showed up every time she landed something.

Jackson and Winklejohn proved once again that there's nobody else in the game that can touch them for overall consistency and ability to build a game plan that fits the fighter and the opponent. Holm was definitely in a focused camp surrounded by mentors and killers. Rousey was surrounded by a bunch of Armenians telling her how fucking tough she is, and Elie Seckbach doing interviews on his GoPro.

[Grandpa's Spells]

the cornering from Rousey's camp was laughably bad.

[Sangoma]

A lot of things become "obvious" in retrospect. I think Rousey is the champion of the highest order, but it is difficult to stay on the top for a long time. The trouble with being a champion is that the potential opponents and their coaches spend a lot of time studying them and figuring out the ways of defeating them. For two years nobody could do that, until Holm's coaches succeeded spectacularly. They found the way to avoid Rousey's strong aspects and capitalised on her weaknesses. I wouldn't be surprised if Rousey's camp finds the ways to take it back in the rematch. Still, you can't take anything away from Holm, her game and the eventual knockout was nothing less of spectacular.

[TerryB]

Cornering in MMA is usually very poor. "You're doing great! Give 'er the old 1-2! She's getting tired! Both hands up!"

And, what is this "plumper pass" you speak of Kazuya??

[baffled]

Rousey's camp won't game plan successfully unless she leaves those grease ball Armenians she hangs out with.

Also, aside from Dana White's future PPV plans, was anything else hit harder last night than Fat Cat's libido?

[baffled]

[Bud Charniga's grape ape]

I haven't seriously followed mma in a long time, but even I could tell that she didn't have a plan other than to keep eating that left and hope it would work out.

[Kazuya Mishima]

Her stand-up coach Edmond Tarverdyan belongs in fucking jail. He filed bankruptcy back during the summer claiming debts of $700,000, assets of around $3,000, and claimed an annual income of $0. The IRS is now looking through the books at Glendale Fight Club to see if there were any preferential transfers of his ownership percentage.

How the hell do you get that much credit to burn through if you don't have a real job?

[Kazuya Mishima]

grease ball Armenians

^^^This.

[baffled]

[Kazuya Mishima]

The best thing about Holly Holm? She's not a bitch.

[TerryB]

A lot has been said about Edmond. Much of it is completely valid; he has no track record to speak of, and the fighters under his tutelage are trending down. His recent comments about Holm not winning the striking battle is just the burning Hindenburg dropped on this dead horse. But his advice is actually much worse than how you remember it. To note, here's the exchange in full:


"Beautiful! Stay nice and patient and relax. Let's rinse that mouth. Don't swallow it. Beautiful work! Listen. All she wants to do is catch you with that left hand and come on top with that hook. We're feinting. We're keeping both hands up!"

Everyone gets hung up on the "beautiful work" line. This isn't a big deal. Fighters respond differently to different situations. In a prizefight where sometimes the only thing you can hear is the sound of your adrenaline pumping, technical advice isn't always the best. Sometimes you just need the reassurance that things aren't as bad as they seem. Whatever the case, that's not the problem here.

The problem here is that Edmond has completely misdiagnosed the problem. Holly isn't just catching Ronda with a left hand. The entire first half of the round hinged entirely on Holm's ability to counter with the right hook. Holly doesn't start coming in with the left until the last minute of the round.

This may sound nit-picky, but all of Holm's efficiency has relied solely on the difference in approach between these two punches. Edmund should either be telling Rousey how to adjust her own attack, or identifying Holm's. He spectacularly does neither.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Don't know who the author is, but he's either wrong or not communicating clearly.

"Beautiful! Stay nice and patient and relax. Let's rinse that mouth. Don't swallow it. Beautiful work! Listen. All she wants to do is catch you with that left hand and come on top with that hook. We're feinting. We're keeping both hands up!"

Everyone gets hung up on the "beautiful work" line. This isn't a big deal. Fighters respond differently to different situations. In a prizefight where sometimes the only thing you can hear is the sound of your adrenaline pumping, technical advice isn't always the best. Sometimes you just need the reassurance that things aren't as bad as they seem. Whatever the case, that's not the problem here.

The problem here is that Edmond has completely misdiagnosed the problem. Holly isn't just catching Ronda with a left hand. The entire first half of the round hinged entirely on Holm's ability to counter with the right hook. Holly doesn't start coming in with the left until the last minute of the round.

This may sound nit-picky, but all of Holm's efficiency has relied solely on the difference in approach between these two punches. Edmund should either be telling Rousey how to adjust her own attack, or identifying Holm's. He spectacularly does neither.

For Rousey to win she was going to have to start closing the distance against a southpaw. Holm's straight left is what she was eating when trying to do so. Keeping your hands up, feinting to get her to throw that punch, and then closing the distance is a reasonable strategy for a person having range control issues.

[baffled]

grease ball Armenians

^^^This.

I've never met one that had any redeemable qualities.

[Shafpocalypse Now]

Tom F above said it better than most.

Rousey's diet guy, Dulce, is a legit idiot.
Whoever did her conditioning was an idiot.

Basically her camp full of loser asskissers is what fucked her, she started believing the hype. Surround yourself with yes men and that's what you get

[SubClaw]

The best thing about Holly Holm? She's not a bitch.

Would!