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How many fighters better than Ronda actually existed in WMMA history?

mkt said:
Gina is similar to Ronda. She retired young after one loss. She had the athleticism and potential to recover, make improvements and possibly still be elite...but would she? We'll never know. I don't have much interest at all in WMMA, but Gina and Ronda are interesting cases of fighters who retired when things got tough--but went into high-paying careers outside MMA, so i don't blame them.

What would've happened if they dug their heels in and tried to climb back to the top? I think Cyborg (especially roided) was kryponite for both, but it would've been interesting to see.
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Never been sold on Gina. She was bigger than pretty much everyone she fought until Cyborg and only seven fights. A lot of stories about her lack of discipline even during fight camp.
 
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I know people want to say Ronda is nowhere close to Nunes but Ronda finished 3 fighters who beat Nunes in a combined 55 seconds.

Alexis Davis, Sarah D'alelio, and Cat Zingano.
 
DanDragon Machi said:
I remember after watching Holly controlling and crushing Ronda of thinking there wasn't doubt that Holly was a better athlete and fighter than her. But today I just see it was just a mismatch case and that don' t reflects the overall level difference between both.Then it became clear that Holly wouldn't even be able to beat every opponent in Ronda resume, much less demolish all them like Rousey did. Her loss by Tate just revealed her ground game was as problematic as Ronda striking, but Ronda's grappling/judo/bjj was way more effective than Holly standing game against most fighters

That said, which female fighters would you classified as a better/tougher to beat than Ronda? I really don't think there are many with tools as efficient as hers

I would classify like this

Arguably better:
Amanda Nunes
Valentina Shevchenko
Cris Cyborg

Same Level (little bit better or little bit worse)
Weli Zhang
Rose Namajunas
Alexa Grasso
Tatiana Suarez
Kayla Harrison
Manon Fiorot
Joanna Jedrzejczyk

Inferior (but no much)
Nathalia Silva
Dakota Ditcheva
Germaine de Randamie
Holly Holm
Norma Dumont
Felicia Spencer
Yan Xiaonan
Enrin Blanchfiled
Larrissa Pacheco

My bigger doubt was on classify Cyborg as better or same level. While she was a beast she wasn't totally dominating against Spencer and Holly and got murdered by the best who she faced
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Not that I believe in P4P discussions, but for you to seemingly have this significant of an interest in WMMA and not mention Megumi Fujii makes me think this is a troll thread.
 
Eater of Souls said:
Never been sold on Gina. She was bigger than pretty much everyone she fought until Cyborg and only seven fights. A lot of stories about her lack of discipline even during fight camp.
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She was big (5'8" with a large frame) and had trouble making weight. Realistically, she should fight at FW, which would greatly limit her options.
 
Ronda gets a lot of heat because she’s not likeable, but her run was pure dominance. They were championship fights, every one of her opponents knew her gameplan, takedown, armbar, they trained, and couldn’t stop it, all champion level fights.

You can say it’s one dimensional and yet at the same time, at the same time, her opponents didn’t train TD defense? Makes no sense.

She was predictable and couldn’t be stopped, that’s why it was amazing, a freight train. Of course when it went off the rails, it was over.
 
DanDragon Machi said:
I remember after watching Holly controlling and crushing Ronda of thinking there wasn't doubt that Holly was a better athlete and fighter than her. But today I just see it was just a mismatch case and that don' t reflects the overall level difference between both.Then it became clear that Holly wouldn't even be able to beat every opponent in Ronda resume, much less demolish all them like Rousey did. Her loss by Tate just revealed her ground game was as problematic as Ronda striking, but Ronda's grappling/judo/bjj was way more effective than Holly standing game against most fighters

That said, which female fighters would you classified as a better/tougher to beat than Ronda? I really don't think there are many with tools as efficient as hers

I would classify like this

Arguably better:
Amanda Nunes
Valentina Shevchenko
Cris Cyborg

Same Level (little bit better or little bit worse)
Weli Zhang
Rose Namajunas
Alexa Grasso
Tatiana Suarez
Kayla Harrison
Manon Fiorot
Joanna Jedrzejczyk

Inferior (but no much)
Nathalia Silva
Dakota Ditcheva
Germaine de Randamie
Holly Holm
Norma Dumont
Felicia Spencer
Yan Xiaonan
Enrin Blanchfiled
Larrissa Pacheco

My bigger doubt was on classify Cyborg as better or same level. While she was a beast she wasn't totally dominating against Spencer and Holly and got murdered by the best who she faced
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Cyborg is good strictly because of steroids so she shouldn't count.

Alexa Grasso seems to be a bad match-up for Valentina but otherwise she's not super good.

Germaine is very overrated. She has good kickboxing of course but nothing else.

Holly lol...she hasn't beaten anyone top 5 worthy, not even the likes of Ketlen Vieira and Miesha Tate, and she only won against Ronda because of good stylistic match up/Ronda refusing to diversify her skillset.

Norma and Felicia...aren't these two good only by the standards of the ultra thin and barely there 145 division? Am I missing something?

Yan Xiaonan - kickboxing and nothing else.

Larisa Pacheco - even though she's 1-2 against Kyla she is NOT a great fighter by any stretch.
 
Qays Stetkevich said:
Nope. Look.At.Ronda's.Striking.
Just comical, and she'd (continue to) get pulverized via strikes. . .

. . . . .aaaaand look at how utterly pathetic the grappling/bjj of virtually all of Ronda's opponents was back then. Sub after sub after sub vs *at best* blue-belt level opponents (and that's being liberal).There are a dime-a-dozen up-and-comers these days with ground games alone (not to mention the world of striking) so, so, so much higher than virtually any of Ronda's opponents had. . . lol with the exception of the ones that clobbered her (and their ground games sucked too!)
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Miesha Tate is a very good grappler and Ronda has won fights in under one minute through striking too.
 
Streeter said:
There is literally only 5 fighters listed here that are not better. The ones listed on same level are NOT the same level they are all better thsn Ronda. ... the ones listed s as arguably better are levels better.

Edmond is that you?
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Yep all those same level fighters are just smaller, so would struggle more to beat her. That doesn't mean Ronda is better, she's just way bigger.
 
Qays Stetkevich said:
Holly has looked like the shadow of a mummy for half a decade now, still has horrible ground game/TDD, and a crap fight IQ. There are TONSN of better-rounded WMMA fighters.
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You just confirmed my point here. Holly has horrible ground game/TDD, crap fight IQ and was able to dominates Irene Aldana for fiver rounds, who is the current top five of the weightclass and just fought for the belt one or two years ago

I didn't say Ronda was well rounded, but you is tryng to to convince me than most current fighters don't have big roles like Ronda had lol. Well rounded female fighters is just exception - there are five or six in the worlrd in max
 
Gigacardio said:
Cyborg is good strictly because of steroids so she shouldn't count.

Alexa Grasso seems to be a bad match-up for Valentina but otherwise she's not super good.

Germaine is very overrated. She has good kickboxing of course but nothing else.

Holly lol...she hasn't beaten anyone top 5 worthy, not even the likes of Ketlen Vieira and Miesha Tate, and she only won against Ronda because of good stylistic match up/Ronda refusing to diversify her skillset.

Norma and Felicia...aren't these two good only by the standards of the ultra thin and barely there 145 division? Am I missing something?

Yan Xiaonan - kickboxing and nothing else.

Larisa Pacheco - even though she's 1-2 against Kyla she is NOT a great fighter by any stretch.
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Do you think never existed a good WMMA so? lol
 
mkt said:
Gina is similar to Ronda. She retired young after one loss. She had the athleticism and potential to recover, make improvements and possibly still be elite...but would she? We'll never know. I don't have much interest at all in WMMA, but Gina and Ronda are interesting cases of fighters who retired when things got tough--but went into high-paying careers outside MMA, so i don't blame them.
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Gina Carano had nowhere near the level of accomplishment of Ronda Rousey. They aren't really comparable.

I suppose they were both bully-style fighters that liked beating people up but couldn't handle losing.

But Ronda Rousey has a long list of accomplishments before she decided that MMA wasn't for her. Carano had a couple of decent wins.
 
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Gigacardio said:
Miesha Tate is a very good grappler and Ronda has won fights in under one minute through striking too.
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I see what you're getting at. . . except that Tate was a (scoff) "very good grappler" . . . 10-15 years ago. Her grappling only looked (scoff) "very good" because WMMA blew utter balls back then and the skill level was "if you train, you're pro!". Tate's grappling would look ammy at best today. Which is a good sign.
 
Without looking at any of the responses I'll say (in no particular order) :

Amanda Nunes
Holly Holm
Marloes Cohen (spelling?)
Christiane Justino
Joanna Jed
Weili Zhang
Valentina Shevchenko

Rousey was a one-trick pony who had very little credible high-quality opposition when UFC started their first female division. Yes she was good at a head-and-arm throw and then arm-barring people. Big deal. Takes more than that to be a legendary MMA fighter but AT THAT TIME it was enough because the opposition was largely weak underskilled and had no idea how to prevent Rousey doing her one party trick.

Rouaey had a terrible attitude (particularly towards women who were better looking than she was), was a bad loser AND a bad winner, obvious psychological issuea plus it's well known she was having an affair with the UFC president for quite a while which gives rise to questions therefore about preferential treatment etc and that became fairly apparent with Herb Dean's obvious bias in his referre-ing of some of her fights.

She was also hostile towards the media for no particular reason and her loss to Holm was rightly well celebrated by many people INCLUDING staff members within the UFC.
 
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Bein a one trick pony dont mean dick.

If you beat everybody with it, its actually cooler.

I love how her being "hostile" and saying mean words has anything to do with how good she was as a fighter. No one asked about her personality.
 
Ronda could have been one of the best. As bad as her striking was, she had pretty good hand speed and power. Edmund was so terrible, he could not her fix basic flaws like poor head movement and being off balance when striking.
 
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