The Rousey Riddle

She is tough, beautiful and just a little bit cocky.  She is “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey, the Strikeforce women’s Bantamweight champion of the world.  On Saturday August 18, 2012 she defended her title for the first time against challenger Sarah Kaufman at Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufman.  It should come to no surprise to fight fans that Rousey won the fight by armbar submission and this time it only took her fifty-four seconds.  She has had six professional fights and all of them have ended the same way, by armbar submission.  Not only that, but all three of her amateur fights all had the same result as well.  This brings up an important question.  Everyone knows what her move of choice is, so how is Rousey so successful with her submission game?  This is what I like to call the “Rousey Riddle”.

Ronda Rousey’s armbar success can be compared to the mystique surrounding Royce Gracie in the early days of the UFC.  All of the men he faced in the cage knew where he would want the fight contested. Yet, when the action started no one could stop him from taking them down and submitting them.  At that time training camps were most likely not as intense as they are today. Plus, the early UFC events were in tournament format; realistically the fighters never knew exactly who they might be fighting.  So I will give the benefit of the doubt to guys like Kimo, Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock.

The professional fighters today know who they are fighting at least a couple of months in advance, unless of course there is an injury situation involving one of the competitors.  If that is the case then why can no one stop Rousey?  Is her Judo that good?  Yes, it is, she’s an Olympian, a medal winning one at that.  But, she’s not a world champion BJJ practitioner so that doesn’t explain why her armbar is so tough.  Sarah Kaufman probably drilled armbar defenses a million times throughout training; still she couldn’t stop it from happening.  It isn’t like Rousey starts the fights mixing up strikes with takedown attempts to confuse her opponents.  No, she goes straight for the takedown and right along to the armbar.

Her six professional fights have lasted a total of seven minutes and fourteen seconds.  That’s not a lot of time to be able to fully judge her talent.  For instance, does she have good cardio?  As of yet we can’t say for sure that she does.  Can she take huge punches?  She can take punches but it’s not a guarantee that she could take them over a five round fight.  These are all valid questions when trying to determine whether the Strikeforce champ really is unstoppable.

After her most recent victory on Saturday, Rousey called out former Strikeforce champion Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos.  Does Santos hold the key to the Rousey Riddle?  A super aggressive striker with nasty intentions, Cyborg has only one official loss on professional record.  That loss came in her first pro fight and it was by submission, it wasn’t an armbar, it was a kneebar.  Most recently she was stripped of her title because she tested positive for banned substances after she won a fight on December 17, 2011.  Let’s say Rousey takes a few months off before that potential fight happens.  This would mean Santos will have been on the shelf for close to a year.  Ring rust could play a factor, something Rousey doesn’t have to worry about seeing as she has fought six times in a year and a half.  At this point in time I have no reason to believe that Rousey wouldn’t come out on top in a fight against Santos.

You can be sure that all the female bantamweight fighters around the world will be studying tape on Rousey.  There may not be much footage of her submitting opponents, but there is a lot of tape of Rousey performing incredible Judo throws.  If someone could stop her takedowns, they would be able to avoid her armbars.  Although, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Rousey pull off the first ever standing armbar, she is just that good.  While fight camps hurry to come up with game plans to defeat Rousey, the question remains.  Who, if anyone, will solve the Rousey Riddle?

Brent Haugh
ProFightingFans.com Staff Writer

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