Rousey: Beating 100% of male 135ers is in the realm of possibilty

The MMA community has lately divided over the issue of how UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey would fare vs. elite males in the same weight class. There has also been discussion around the propriety of the debate.

Julie Kedzie @julesk_fighter

•This whole “Rousey fighting a man” thing is getting old. She’s proved herself as the best 135er in the world and it smacks of condescension.

•Oh yeah, you’ve beaten almost everyone in your weight class/division but it’s not good enough because they didn’t have penises.

Kaitlin Young @kaitlin_young

Men who actually ARE elite enough to be pulling the “physically superior male” card are almost never the ones who need to bring it up 😉

Rousey’s mother, Dr. AnnMaria De Mars spoke with Jeremy Brand for MMASucka about remarks made by Ian McCall on the subject.

I think that they are just trying to get attention, said Dr. De Mars. Basically what he’s saying is, I can beat up a girl. Which is not too impressive to most real men. So I’ll say the same thing that my husband said when someone asked him, if he felt like less of a man because he was married to a woman who could beat him up. He said ‘if I ever had the need to feel like a man I would go get naked and look down and then I would feel like a man.’ So I would recommend that’s what Ian McCall do.

However, in a Thursday appearance on The Dan Patrick Show, Rousey appeared amused by the chatter, and joked that she would the “throw that idea out there” to the UFC.

“I’m not offended,” said Rousey as transcribed by Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting, ” I really don’t think that’s serious. I consider it a compliment that people will even consider it.”

Then in an interview with ESPN’s SportsCenter, Rousey showed the attitude of a great champion, and doubled down on the talk that she could beat 50% of the UFC’s male bantamweights.

“I never say that I’m incapable of beating anybody, because I don’t believe in putting limits on myself,” said Rousey. “So I mean, I would have to say if you’re just talking about what’s in the realm of possibility of what’s possible of who I could beat, well I could beat 100 percent of them. You can’t tell me that there’s a zero percent chance that I can beat anyone on the planet, so I’m never gonna say that.”

Rousey discussed why she she is the most dominant champion in the UFC, ever.

“It’s not that (the other female fighters) are lacking anything so much,” said Rousey. “They decided later in life that they wanted to be a fighter. A lot of these girls already developed a personality and had a life and one day they decided, ‘I’m gonna give it a try.’ Whereas, this is literally what I was raised to do.”

One of the central guiding principle of judo is Maximum Efficiency with Minimum Effort. Rousey’s 14 second win over Cat Zingano at UFC 184 exemplifies that.

“I want to win with maximum efficiency and minimum effort,” she said. “People forget that the shorter the fights are, the more fights that I can have. I feel like I’m actually making my career longer this way.”

“I looked through it and there literally isn’t a single wasted movement the entire fight. I wish I could have reacted a little sooner maybe with her charging at me. I can’t say a single bad thing about it, except for my reaction time in the beginning. If you watch it frame by frame, literally I did a backwards cartwheel off my face. I didn’t plan that at all. But if that’s your reaction at the moment, I guess you planned something right.”

Rousey says her next fight may be around August.