The Savage Truth: Domino Effect

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MELBOURNE, Australia -- Well, unless you’ve been buried under a rock for the last couple days, you’ve heard that the “not once-in-a-lifetime, more like once-ever” Ronda Rousey on Saturday was knocked out in a monumental upset authored by Holly Holm at UFC 193. There are a million different storylines in play after the unthinkable happened, and everyone seems to have a hot take about what the causal factors were in the history-making shocker. So I guess I’ll throw my hat in the ring and take a crack at finger pointing and divining.

First off, I know it’s cool to jump online and be the guy that tells everyone fighters suck when they experience their first loss, and while that’s true from time to time, this is not one of those occasions. Rousey is a special talent who combined her years of training, natural ability and tireless dedication to her craft with a rarely seen knack for self-promotion to seize her opportunity and open up the highest level of mixed martial arts competition for all the women who have flooded into the Ultimate Fighting Championship over the last few years.

With that said, this was the most vulnerable Rousey has looked in her career. Never before had she had the kind of media responsibilities, the outside distractions, the family discord or, most importantly, an opponent that in hindsight was seemingly better prepared and unintimidated by her.

I was surprised to see how many people were picking Holm, but when I saw Rousey at the weigh-ins, the fact that she may have been shaken going into this fight started to creep into the back of my mind. The trembling voice, flustered countenance and lack of control were not the hallmarks of Rousey’s previous promotional tirades. Something seemed off.

It’s not surprising considering the internal strife with which she had been dealing leading up to the bout. Her mother, never shy to offer her opinion on just about anything, lit up her daughter’s coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, like Clark Griswold’s house in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” She might as well have dumped a 55-gallon drum of gasoline on him and lit it on fire. The vitriolic rant cast aspersions on both Tarverdyan’s skill as a coach and his character as a human being.

That’s not exactly the kind of thing anyone in MMA, much less the most visible fighter in the sport, wants hitting the wires in the weeks leading up to the biggest fight of her career. I’m sure Mama Rousey thought she was doing the right thing -- heck, most people I know in the sport believe all the things she stated were on point -- but to do that in the lead-up to the fight was nothing short of sabotage. Also, I don’t know about you, but I was wondering how Tarverdyan’s July bankruptcy information finally got into the hands of media members in November. I know if I was playing Clue, my first guess would be Dr. AnnMaria DeMars in the conservatory with the text message.

It must have been a huge burden for Rousey to bear as the UFC made its debut in Melbourne with expectations of upwards of 70,000 fans packing Etihad Stadium. She did her part, making the rounds on the daily talk shows, sports networks and social media, in addition to the normal media obligations main-event fighters undertake in the buildup to a pay-per-view fight.

It seems like the extra duties took their toll. She wouldn’t back off, though, as evidenced by her admirable decision to meet and sign autographs for every fan that waited after open workouts in Federation Square the Thursday before the fight. I’m not saying that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, but at some point, someone has to say enough is enough; and it seems like Rousey lacks that voice in her camp.

Last but not least, we have Holm.

I’ve said Rousey is akin to Royce Gracie in the early days of the UFC. She was the fighter with a toolbox full of implements her opponents had never really seen before. Brazilian jiu-jitsu was a foreign concept to early UFC competitors who were, for the most part, a rag-tag group of martial artists who had little to no knowledge of the ground game. While Rousey’s opponents were assuredly more well-versed in the intricacies of the sport than Gracie’s, she was just so much more athletic, driven and, like Liam Neeson’s character in the “Taken” films, in possession of a certain set of skills she had acquired over many, many years of competing at the highest levels of judo.

However, like you see in every sport, when one person or team puts some distance between themselves and the peloton, it doesn’t take those left behind a long time to figure out what they’re doing to gain a decisive advantage. Enter Mike Winkeljohn and Greg Jackson, two of the sports best coaches who have collaboratively prepared many a mixed martial artist for what was supposed to be an unwinnable fight. They took Holm and gave her a game plan that had been carefully constructed to take away the safe areas of the fight for Rousey -- taking away her “teddy bear” as Jackson put it after the fight. Holm forced her into positions where she wasn’t comfortable, and that gave her the ability to utilize her world-class striking arsenal.

Holm also did not buy into the Rousey hype as so many of her previous opponents had. She told everyone she thought some of the women were mentally beaten before they stepped into the Octagon with Rousey and that she would not be intimidated. It’s one thing to say it and another to be able to follow through with it. It was apparent after weigh-ins she was the one with upper hand in the mental warfare game.

Holm didn’t just knock out Rousey; she battered the myth of invincibility that cloaked the former champion. It’s not dissimilar to the situation Mike Tyson -- a fighter to whom Rousey has been compared many times -- encountered after James “Buster” Douglas knocked him silly in 1990. He was never the same fighter again, and only time will reveal the effect the loss will have on Rousey and, more importantly, her future opponents.

I don’t know what the future holds for Rousey or Holm or even women’s MMA for that matter, but what I do know is we witnessed a turning point for all of them in Melbourne. The path Rousey chooses will be most interesting to observe for obvious reasons. She’s the most recognizable MMA fighter in the world and will continue to drive media attention.

My quick take on a rematch: Holm beats her again, unless Rousey makes some drastic changes to her team and her preparations. She had zero answers for Holm, and there was no Plan B when she couldn’t implement her high-pressure attack. That’s an unforgivable sin for a corner, and unless she suddenly blossoms into the striker the UFC hype machine tried to make everyone believe in, then she’s destined for a similar fate.

Greg Savage is the executive editor of Sherdog.com and can be reached by email or via Twitter @TheSavageTruth.