Thoughts on Ronda Rousey

So Ronda Rousey just lost her UFC championship belt to Holly Holm. I have thoughts.

1. I think Holly Holms just cost Cyborg Santos (with whom she is reportedly friends) a fortune. A Cyborg - Rousey fight, as long as Rousey stayed undefeated, would have made a ton of money. Cyborg in the UFC against anybody else will never be as compelling.

2. Holms was an awful style matchup for Rousey. The surprise was how well she dealt with the handful of clinch opportunities that Rousey got. None of the analysts expected the standup to go any different than it did; what people didn't anticipate was that Holms, by keeping her hips low and her elbow in, would be skilled enough to negate Rousey's hip tosses. Watch this for a great breakdown.

3. It's hard to imagine that Rousey wasn't distracted by outside the cage issues. She's become exponentially more popular during this prefight period, and facing distractions - Travis Browne's issues and her mom's comments about her coach - that she hasn't dealt with before.

4. Rousey has been learning to throw punches, and she's good at that, but seems to have developed none of the other skills related to boxing. She can't move her head, doesn't defend much, can't cut off a ring (she moves straight in, winging punches, until she can get the clinch, in every fight). The questions at hand are, will she find a coach who can teach her these things? And is she still teachable or is she too full of herself to learn a new skillset?

5. Lube. I'm not even going to make the joke, it's too easy.

6. Holm was unbelievably well coached and unbelievably mentally strong. Her movement was no surprise, but to avoid panic while in the clinch with Rousey? Nobody else has done that. I suspect that her relative experience (lots of boxing) made a big difference. Very few female MMA fighters have a lot of fights under their belts (the sport is fairly new). Holm has lots of experience on a pro stage getting punched and rocked and coming back from it. That's rate.

7. I can't decide if this is good or bad for women's MMA. Rousey brought tons of interest to the sport, and we have no reason to think Holm can duplicate that. But from a sport perspective Holm's win opens up the division - now we have tons of interesting matchups to see, whereas before the UFC seemed desperate to find anybody who could make a worthwhile fight against Rousey.

8. I think we're going to see a lot of casual fans being introduced to the concept of MMA Math. Basically, lots of people will probably expect Holm to completely dominate every female fighter out there - after all, she dominated Rousey, who had dominated everybody else. But styles make fights and she might not turn out to be as dominant as we thought.

9. I wonder if Holm will be willing to move up in weight to fight Cyborg.

10. Most fight fans think Rousey should switch coaches at this point - her coach does not have a good track record with other fighters, and Rousey's skillset does not seem to have developed under him, and his between-round advice was horrifically awful. So, does she find a better coach? Or is loyalty more important? I'm inclined to say she should move on. I wonder if there will be any backlash among fans if she ditches the guy who brought her to this point. (I actually think there won't be).

If you haven't watched the fight, you should. It was a lovely display of technical mastery.