DC on how to beat Rousey: ‘Piss her off’
Daniel Cormier: “Piss her off like Bethe Correia did and hope that she abandons the grappling. Then she’ll just stand with you which means you’ll have a better chance.”
UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier appeared recently on Steve Austin’s podcast, and offered some pointers to anyone fighting league women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey.
“Piss her off,” he said, as transcribed by David St. Martin for MMAFighting.com. “Piss her off like Bethe did and hope that she abandons the grappling. Then she’ll just stand with you which means you’ll have a better chance, even though it might not be the greatest chance, you have a better chance in the standup than you would grappling with her. That’s my approach as a coach.”
“Don’t go family. Piss her off in another way. Don’t make it personal to the level that Bethe did. That was bad. But [Correia] did a good job, though. She sold the fight. Bethe Correia made people care. 18-1, it was one of the biggest mismatches in UFC history, but we tuned in because we wanted to see what Ronda was going to do and how she’d make this woman pay.”
“She wanted to prolong the beating on Bethe Correia, but they can’t stay with her. Even when she’s trying to drag it on. She wanted to make Bethe pay and she face-planted her with a right hand. ‘How is Ronda going to make this girl pay?’ Unfortunately her idea of making her pay was to stand with her and look what happens.
“You could see immediately that Bethe understood that she was in over her head. She was like, ‘Wow, she’s beating me where I’m supposed to hold the advantage.”
“(Rousey) came 20 years too early. In 20 years you will have girls that have competed a lifetime in Judo in the Olympics and they will be fighting at the level she’s probably at today. She’s 20 years ahead of her time.”
Next for Rousey is a trilogy fight with Miesha Tate, who is on a four-fight win streak.