After Ronda Rousey’s latest dominating win over Cat Zingano in 14 seconds, everyone started seriously discussing how Rousey would do in a fight against a man. The talks were hypothetical for a while, but then something changed. The more people thought about it, the more they wanted to see it.
Every Q&A with Ronda had the question come up, and soon she and the UFC had to pour cold water on the idea and say that kind of fight would never be sanctioned and therefore would never happen in the UFC. End of story? Maybe not. Here’s Rousey talking with Sports Illustrated Now on the subject:
Jon Wertheim: How would she do against a dude inevitably becomes part of the conversation. Does that annoy you? Is that something you’re happy to sort of ponder? It seems to be whenever you fight and win it’s inevitably the Monday conversation.
Ronda Rousey: Well, I think it’s good that it’s even being debated at all because people weren’t even talking about that kind of thing before and so yeah I hear a lot of questions repetitively but I love that we’re reaching a point in women’s athletics where we’re talking about ‘How would a woman compare’ because it does seem extremely plausible at this point.
She probably means the idea seems extremely plausible, not that it’s extremely plausible we’ll see an actual fight. But if it’s a good thing for people to think she might win, wouldn’t it be an amazing thing for her and women’s sports to actually do it?
We keep going back to the infamous Battle of the Sexes tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King and the effect that had. Obviously, mixed martial arts is very different and comes with some hot button violence issues built in. But at its core it is the purest form of competition. To have a woman beat a man in MMA would be a special moment in sporting history. And isn’t that every athlete’s goal? To create history, to push the boundaries of what people thought was possible and to inspire others?
Ronda Rousey keeps breaking every glass ceiling she comes into contact with. She very well could break through the wall between genders in mixed martial arts. If she doesn’t become such a superstar in the next year or two that she leaves the sport before the idea gets too big to ignore.