What else can make us feel so excited or uneasy, so exhilarated or crestfallen, so effortlessly? What else but sport, the freest form of escapism around.
As for feeling helplessly gullible, sport is rarely so rude to push us down that road. But early on Sunday morning the ‘I told you sos’ rattling around cyberspace were as lonely as a rabbit shivering on Pluto after an unconscious Ronda Rousey had crashed to the canvas in Melbourne, her invincibility shattered.
Nobody – or a vanishingly small number only – had expected it. Prior to Melbourne, Rousey’s previous three UFC bantamweight title defences had lasted 16 seconds, 14 seconds and 34 seconds.
People were not tuning in to see Rousey thrash about in deep water before emerging victorious. They were tuning in for a demonstration of indestructibility in three short acts: the rhino charge, the judo toss and the merciless arm bar.
They also liked her fearsome walkout stare, which played the role of seductive hors d’ouevre to the main course in the same way Mike Tyson’s shirtless, sockless walk to the ring was a clue to the grisly fate that awaited his opponent. This girl was mean but at least she knew a forkful of main course required something extra.
Sports Illustrated had labelled her the most dominant athlete in the world, among men and women in all sports, and when she won an ESPY for fighter of the year in July, she displayed a dazzling gift for self-promotion by calling out Floyd Mayweather and alluding to his history of domestic abuse. “I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once.”
Her power outside the octagon was growing. She found that she could provoke tears of adoration in UFC colour commentator Joe Rogan and cast a spell in enemy territory by making thousands in Rio chant her name. Before we knew it Rogan was mining new seams of hyperbole prior to Melbourne. “She’s not just a once in a lifetime, she’s a once ever.”
Oscar De La Hoya didn’t want to feel left out. He came running up the driveway with flowers and chocolates and put her on the front cover of ‘Ring Magazine’. A non-boxer AND a woman. Adorning boxing’s bible. The gloves came off. There was all sorts of hand-wringing. But De La Hoya was only warming up. Suddenly he was daydreaming, with a beatific smile, the outcome of a scrap between his new golden girl and boxing’s recently retired overlord. “Ronda taps him out,” he said. “Easy. There’s no doubt about it. Most likely, Mayweather’s going to run. They go in the centre of the ring, that’s five seconds. By the time that she catches him, that’s another five. I would say about 16, 17 seconds.”
Back on Earth, the cage door closes and standing in front of Rousey is Holly Holm, a former multiple world champion in women’s boxing. Holm’s demise within 17 seconds would have triggered fresh gasps. But shock? Not really.
In front of over 65,000 people in Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium, however, it all went wrong for Rousey. Humiliations don’t come more public. She was bullied and beaten up. Her mouth was bloodied at the end of round one and she may have suffered a concussion when Holm landed that devastating kick to the neck one minute into the second round. Rousey was treated like an amateur and when she lay supine on the canvas, felled like a sequoia, her eyelids down, the MMA world was plunged into the deepest shock it had ever known.
What went wrong?
Rousey is an excellent clinch fighter and a devastating submission artist, but the sneaking suspicion that she was not a proficient boxer became hard fact last weekend. The key to the fight was distance management. Holm, an out-fighter, wished to maintain it: counter-punch, circle away, avoid engagement in the pocket. Rousey wished to close it; entering the pocket was good, laying her hands on Holm and putting her in a headlock even better. But best of all was flinging her with frightening control into the death-zone, where her supremacy is overwhelming. Holm could run but the floor was eventually waiting for her.
For those with an interest in the technical details of combat sports, the Heavyhands podcast is an indispensable listen, and as they and other analysts have maintained since the weekend, Rousey lacked two of the attributes indispensable to a pressure fighter: efficient footwork and defensive savvy. Conor McGregor has proved himself a master of cage-cutting footwork and his arsenal of defensive tricks ensures his suffering in the pocket is minor compared to the damage he inflicts.
Rousey hunted Holm but it was like hunting a face-punching phantom. Her head was stationary and her chin up, and when the challenger’s straight left exacted the first steep payment, the shock felt by onlookers was palpable. It would only get worse. She was outmuscled in the clinch, her single takedown came to zero and soon Holm’s powerful lefts were coming off an assembly line. Holm landed 29 of 44 head strikes in the fight, a remarkably high 65.9 per cent success rate.
Confused by events, commentator Mike Goldberg blurted: “It takes a lot of energy to be a rock star.” Not confused at all, Rogan replied: “She’s getting punched in the face. Got nothing to do with being a rock star!”
Towards the end of the first round, the unbeatable Rousey was exhausted and it was almost painful to witness that mythos of invincibility being dismantled in front of millions watching around the world. Fifty seconds into the second round the fight, and an era, was over.
What next for Rousey? First up, some R&R. Then work on her boxing technique. But with whom? Legendary boxing coach Freddie Roach is one name that’s been mentioned. Even Mayweather has offered his services. Still, the main question is whether she retains coach Edmond Tarverdyan. His corner advice as Rousey sat dazed on a stool (“champ, beautiful work”) and post-fight claim that Holm was not winning the stand-up battle have badly damaged an already brittle reputation.
It hardly helps Tarverdyan that Rousey’s mother, AnnMaria De Mars, who coached her daughter to a judo bronze medal in 2008 Olympics in Beijing, is a scathing critic. To put it mildly.
“I think Edmond is a terrible coach,” she said in October. “I think he hit the lottery when Ronda walked in there . . . She was one of the top athletes in the world and he wouldn’t even give her the time of day for months. Somebody like that is a terrible coach. I think she stays there [out of] superstition and I would caution anybody from going there. I’ve told Ronda I’m not going to be quiet about this anymore.”
De Mars became more animated. “I hate him,” she said. “I would run him over with my car if there wasn’t a law against it.”
Many people are expecting Rousey to have a new coach when her almost inevitable rematch with Holm happens.
