Ronda Falls

Just watched the Ronda Rousey and Holly Holm fight.

It is being called the biggest upset ever, and here's my two cents about what I saw.

First off, the fighters' backgrounds.

Ronda Rousey is a Judo savant. Her takedowns and ground game are just about perfect. Since joining mma, she has worked hard to fill in the holes in her game, notably striking. She found herself a boxing coach that she likes, and has made him her top coach. As a result, she's a pretty fair banger now.

Holly Holm is a boxer, and is world class. She has also trained in kickboxing, and her mma fights clearly show that she has top-level kicking in her game. She says that she's been training with Rousey in mind just about forever. That implies a lot of work on take-down defence and on grappling.

Perhaps Ronda's biggest weakness is that she trains and fights on emotion, and has a very big ego.

Out the two women came, reached boxing range, and started to exchange. Both scored, but Holly clearly was getting the better of it, especially in hard shots landed.

For most of the first round, it was Ronda chasing after Holly, reaching punching range, and stopping to punch. Of the two, Holly was faster going backwards than Ronda was going forwards.

Ronda was moving her feet like a boxer, but Holly was not. She was moving fast, like a Karate or Tae Kwon Do fighter. She would dodge under a Rousey flurry and be half way across the ring before Ronda would get turned around again. Holly moved fast.

After a few exchanges, it became clear that Ronda wanted to grapple, but she kept moving like a boxer. She would chase Holly, catch up, slow down, and box while moving slowly forward. Holly would flee, let Ronda catch up, and punch while still moving backward too fast for Ronda to close on.

At one point, Ronda took Holly down, but Holm scrambled away fast. The few other times Ronda managed to grapple, Holly got out. Ronda should have never permitted that, but it seemed she was more concerned about throwing a few shots as Holly escaped rather than doing everything possible to stop her.

You could also see Ronda lose her level of comfort. She is usually totally composed in the ring, and even though intense she fights relaxed. Being all banged up and confused, she was burning way too much energy to no good effect. She was breathing hard on returning to her corner after round one. She never breaths hard.

Between the rounds, her top coach (the guy that has taught her to punch and to move slowly like a boxer), told her to keep doing what she was doing. What she was doing was getting her ass kicked.

So round two was a continuation of round one. At one point the exhausted Ronda slipped, and got up facing away from Holm. This was a rookie mistake caused by fatigue and confusion.

Bam; a headkick took her down, and it was all over.

Holly fought the perfect fight. Ronda did not. Holly has clearly trained in exactly the right way to fight Ronda, and the reverse was clearly not true.

For the rematch, the biggest thing Ronda needs to change is her understanding of distance.

In fighting Holm, she needs to be either safely out of range, or all the way in and grappling. Hanging around in punching range is not where she wants to be. This is something her boxing coach is not equipped to teach her. She has to learn how to blitz through the intervening distance, not plod.

She has also been training with too many distractions. She has become involved with Hollywood movie making nonsense, and has boyfriend issues. It is an axiom of fighting that too much of this sort of thing seriously compromises training focus.

Anyhow. That's my two cents.