Ronda Rousey
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By In Mixed Martial Arts

The Two Types of Defeat

“The new school year in Korea begins with the new calendar year. As such, I got to know my new batch of students this week. Introductory classes are always boring and a little dry, since they mostly exist to learn names, highlight important dates and go over expectations. However, the first day is when I explain the theme of my class, which is really what I try to make the theme of my life in general: to embrace failure. It’s a typical teacher truism, and I’m aware of how cheesy it can sound, but I genuinely believe it. We are, after all, human, and failure is inevitable. What matters is not avoiding failure but developing the ability to learn from it.

UFC 207 on Friday provided two case studies in how to fail and how not to fail. Especially for the “New Year-New Me” resolution crowd, the ways in which former champions Dominick Cruz and Ronda Rousey dealt with their defeats are instructive…”

 

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By In Mixed Martial Arts

Lies, Damned Lies, and Everything Else

“My friend and I used to cruise at his grandparents’ house as teenagers. Mostly, it had a secluded garden next to a canal, making it an ideal place for smoking, drinking and hanging out. It also had his grandpa, though, the chairman of the physical sciences department at the university and a PhD in chemistry from Harvard University.

Although I only understood a fraction of what he told us — I would ask him ridiculous questions about who would win in a battle between quicksand and a black hole and he would answer with deep, legitimate knowledge on both — I will never forget the jokes he told. They weren’t funny, so much as eye-opening. Apparently, in the world of academia, the equivalent of “dumb blonde jokes” was “dumb social scientist jokes.” They started with something along the lines of “a physicist, a mathematician and an economist/psychologist/sociologist walk into a bar …” and end, invariably, with the punchline pointing out the stupidity of the social sciences.

The jokes were more goofy than mean, but the point still stood. Math, physics and chemistry, it was explained, are the real sciences, the math-based sciences. They were precise and concrete compared to the softness of the social sciences.

This type of thinking applies to fight analysis, too. There’s a tendency to view statistics as flatly superior analytical tools, especially compared to psychological assessment. One is observable and measurable and concrete, while the other is purely speculative; we can see what a fighter has done in the cage, but we can’t actually know what’s going on in his or her head. Good fight analysts will include both to varying degrees, but usually the latter is a footnote that qualifies the former in some way…”

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By In Mixed Martial Arts

Time for a UFC-Invicta Merger

“It wasn’t long ago that the conversation about women’s divisions in the Octagon started and ended with one word: never. Of course, a lot has changed since then — namely, Ronda Rousey happened — and now with the successful expansion of the strawweight division and solid showcase bouts at 125 and 140 pounds, the arguments that women’s divisions are untenable or uninteresting are dumber and more transparently antiquated than ever.

The audience for female fighting is very real, and it’s continuing to grow as the quality of competition improves. That makes sense; mixed martial arts is now a legitimate option for female martial artists and athletes who otherwise had few avenues to pursue. The early days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship provided similar opportunities for non- and post-Olympic wrestlers, as well as fighters outside the pure boxing spectrum, so long as they were the appropriate gender. In all fairness, up until the last several years, there really wasn’t much of a place for female fights outside of niche audiences, but now that is demonstrably not the case…”
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By In Mixed Martial Arts

Cyborg and the Post-Rousey World

“When Ronda Rousey lost at UFC 193 in November, it felt like a defining moment. The biggest star in the sport went supernova, sending shockwaves into the MMA universe that have just begun to register.

Before her fateful collision with Holly Holm’s shin, Rousey put women’s MMA on the map. She quickly rose to become the first legitimate female draw in MMA and then transcended that label to become one of the biggest draws in combat sports period. However, what we are now coming to understand is that Rousey did not only bring women’s MMA to the forefront of public consciousness — she single-handedly held it there. The proof lies in the declining fan interest around Invicta Fighting Championships featherweight titleholder Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino…”

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