Why Ronda Rousey isn’t the outlier she appears to be

Why Ronda Rousey isn’t the outlier she appears to be

By Gary Wise Feb 18, 2014

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On February 22nd, Ronda Rousey fights Sara McMann at UFC 170 in the latest installment of what’s been a meteoric and dominant run. Below, we look at similar cases throughout sports history and ask whether the outlier Rousey represents is really an outlier at all.

Rowdy Ronda

If you’re not familiar with Ronda Rousey, she’s the female face of MMA. An Olympic bronze medalist in judo, she’s parlayed that sport’s tosses into a phenomenal rise through women’s MMA ranks. She boasts a career mark of 8-0, with all eight of her victories coming by submission, seven of them in the first round. That run includes three title defenses.

Rousey is presently the 1.238* favorite at UFC 170 despite her opponent’s undefeated record. It’s easily arguable that she’s the UFC’s most dominant champion right now, in part because of the poor caliber of opposition in her division.

Women’s MMA and the PPV illusion

In 2012, Rousey appeared on the cover of ESPN Magazine’s ‘the body’ issue, an annual celebration of athletes in the world’s 24th most circulated magazine. That exposure, Rousey’s charm an exciting fighting style made Rousey an incredibly marketable asset, a fact many credit for the UFC’s decision to expand its ranks to include a women’s division (that this division happens to be in her 135lb weight class also supports the notion).

The result of this hurried product is a division that’s relatively lacking in technical expertise and depth; McMann, for example, is getting her title fight off the strength of a single UFC fight, a victory over an opponent who’d also never fought in the UFC previously. Most of their male counterparts would need to string together 3-4 or more wins in order to get a title shot. While Rousey-McMann is the main event on a PPV, that doesn’t mean the division is up to the standards of more-established male weight classes. Why is this important?

Early stars in undeveloped sports/leagues

Simply, the earlier the stage of development a sport or division is in, the more opportunity there is for a major outlier. The more developed a discipline is, the more education there is within that endeavor; with an increasingly educated community comes an increased opportunity to learn, and that flattens the learning curve. In short, the opportunity to gain an advantage by virtue of the opposition missing something in its education becomes lesser and lesser as a sport or division evolves.

Early men’s MMA gives us a blueprint to this effect. Royce Gracie, a specialist in positional grappling fighting in a field comprised mostly of pure strikers, dominated the earliest UFCs. Just 170 pounds, Gracie went 11-0 over the course of the first four cards in the organization’s history (fighting in tournaments that involved multiple fights in a given night) because, where his opponents came from more popular disciplines that only used striking and striking defense, Gracie came prepared for a wider variety of fighting styles. He defeated less-experienced/prepared men despite their ranging from 180-250 lbs.

The online poker world gives us another strong example. 15 years ago, anyone who’d read a poker book entered most tables at a huge advantage due to the majority of players taking a casual approach to the game. Now, educated by texts and television, the vast majority of online poker players come to the table with experience in hand. Today’s weaker players would likely have dominated those tables from 15 years ago; those who lacked basic survival tactics have either run out of money or moved on to other endeavors…there’s no navet left for professionals to exploit. While there are still standouts in poker, the deviation they enjoy from a standard level of play isn’t nearly so pronounced as that of yesteryear.

Ladies golf

It’s clear from these examples that this isn’t limited to women’s sports by any means, but we do see another example of this phenomenon in the early history of women’s golf majors.

The US Open was the first ladies major in golf, and immediately showcased three remarkable careers: Babe Zaharias won three times from 1948-1954, Betsy Rawls won four times from 1951-1960 and Mickey Wright four times from 1959-1964. Those three women each won the title three or more times in the event’s first 16 years; only three women have won three times in the 50 years since. Similarly, Wright won the LPGA Championship 4 times in the event’s first nine years. No one else has won it four times.

What does it all mean?

In short, Rousey has a legitimate claim as a true outlier. Bringing an unusual style (Judo isn’t widely applied as a primary discipline in MMA) at peak levels, she’s proven difficult to train for and the rest of the women’s MMA industry seems to have lagged behind in combating what she brings to the ring (granted, the fact her last fight was her first to go past the first round may suggest the pieces to the puzzle are finally – albeit slowly – starting to come together). Why does this matter? Because now you understand why the undefeated McMann is a 4.620* underdog. That’s not to say the challenger doesn’t have a chance; only that Rousey has probably earned the status that her odds reflect. She may for a while yet.

Click here to see the best UFC 170 betting odds

*Odds subject to change

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