Yeah, but can she beat a man

Ronda Rousey is the UFC's Womens Bantamweight champion. She pretty much tosses her opponents around like rag-dolls, and typically twists their arms until they pop off.

The most ignorant comment that people make about her is usually the question, “yeah, but could she beat a man?”

Of course she can, she trains much more with men than with women. This is usually countered with, “yeah, but those guys aren't going full out. It's training.”

In her mother, Dr. de Mars' blog of July 10, 2010 she mentions in passing about Ronda doing two tournaments of which she, her mother, disapproved.

Keep in mind that this blog was a month before Ronda's amateur mma debut, and 8 months before her first pro-mma fight.

It seems Ronda fought in a local Judo tournament in the men's 180 pound division a few years earlier. At the time, Ronda was about 150 pounds. She won. Granted, it was a local tournament, but the guys in it were all trained, Black-Belt Judoka who were certainly going full out.

She had also fought in a local men's mma tournament shortly before the blog entry, this time in the 170 pound division. She won.

Does this mean that she could beat any man? Don't be silly. Even at her own weight I don't think this is likely, but there are guys in the top-ten at 135 pounds (Ronda's current fighting weight) that she could whomp.

I think what the, “could she beat a man,” crowd are saying is that if there is even one guy out there that can beat her, then it means women can't beat men.

It somehow hurts their masculinity to think such an outrage could even be possible.

The female 100 meter record is 10.49 seconds. That means that she was faster than every man that lived prior to 1921, and damn near every man since then. Does it somehow comfort neanderthals to think that because the male record is 9.58 seconds that somehow men are superior to women?

I'm pretty sure that elite female sprinters can outrun those guys, and Ronda Rousey can certainly kick their butts.