Spoiler I shook. Shook in victory and smugness. RR always had rudimentary striking, everyone here has been saying that. We also all agreed that HH is definatley the better striker and RR needed to get in and clinch to win. RR did the silly and arrogant thing and tried to "prove" she was World Class striker. With no striking credentials. The people she KO'd had similar striking experience to her. HH phased RR with good strikes, made her doubt and capitalised in mistakes. RR's chin has well and truly (and finally) tested and time for RR to move camps. In my humble opinion. ================ Joanna / Valerie. This was a very close match. Valerie, may have cut too much weight in there. She didn't look well, you could see how thin her arms and thighs were, compared to how she usually looks. Good general back and forth fight. JJ won, but I thought it would've been a closer decision. ================ Hunt / Silva Hunt. Punch. Walk off. Repeat. #warHunt =============== Honourary mentions Kyle Noke's front kick was amazing. Ahkbar Arreola's surname made me giggle like a child. Ben Ngyuen is finally not a viral sensation Moontasri's spin kick/backfist combo made me jump and whoop. Uriah Hall keeps showing everyone, he doesn't do well under pressure. Just avoid his crafty striking. Fight of the Night Holm/Rousey Snooze of the Night Struke / Rushold
Spoiler The Joanna fight was closer then it should of been because Joanna managed to break her hand again during the fight which slowed her down. I hope that doesn't become a chronic problem because I would hate to see her gone.
Good thing I cleared the cobwebs from my eyes and had a second look before I signed over the keys to the kingdom. Spoiler ahem...btw, that's Struve/Rosholt or maybe it Struggle/In-a-Rush-to-Hold from what I read about it.
Spoiler To be fair I don’t think she was arrogant to think she could stand with HH, I think she was forced to because she couldn’t close the distance and get the clinch working, she was not cutting angles, not walking HH down behind her jab, but running after her desperately, trying to get hold of her, and once that happened she was in real trouble. In previous fights RR has walked down fighters, cut the ring of really well, here she didn’t/ couldn’t , looked like a combination of great footwork and coaching for HH and awful fight prep and planning on RR part, she didn’t look anything like the fighter she has been, even in the clinch she was trying to muscle the throws, not link them like she normally does,and when she did get the fight down she was still loose as hell on the ground, very strenage for her how much of that was down to bad prep and how much was down to HH hurting her we wont know, but as I have already said HH fight prep and coaches were spot on, RR were terrible, hopefully she will move on and find a camp that can actually improve her as a fighter I think the analogy with GSP and Serra is wrong, this fight was so one sided it was more like Jędrzejczyk v Esparza, it will be hard to come back from being so dominated, her aura of superhuman invincibility has been shattered, and danas gravy train well and truly derailed
Spoiler Has she really though? I've always thought she was mainly just a bull rusher that faced people that couldn't side step very well or convinced themselves to try and catch her on the way in. This time Holm took her time, angled off, picked her shots well, had good footwork and tried not to hang around in the pocket. Rousey looked flustered and desperate and literally let her guard down when sloppily exiting a clinch against a known headkicker. Holm fought the kind of fight everyone facing Rousey should have fought before and has set the blue print for defeating her. Good luck next time Ronda. Your future fights just got a lot harder.
Spoiler She bull rushed her first few fights, then started working behind her jab to get in, Others have tried to keep out the clinch and away from her (none have had HHs foot work or range though) but she usually manages to get in without taking too much punishment, actually to be fair she managed to get the clinch and a bad takedown against HH, usually that would have been the end of the fight but as I said her ground work wasn’t tight, and the takedown not up to her usual standards, which points to a very bad camp and coaching, if your bread and butter isn’t working well its going to be a bad night Future fights will be interesting, lets be honest everyone knew what it would take to beat RR, you need to stay at range, keep your distance use long punches to hurt her etc, no one but HH has managed to do this, no one else at the weight is as good a striker as HH is though, but im sure others will be chomping at the bit to get a fight with RR how she has been made to look human
Spoiler It was the effectiveness of that superman defence. Ronda managed to close several times but couldn't tie her up. I wonder if she had a bit of a Josh Koschek experience, focused too much on her hands and her grappling regressed.
Spoiler Yep HH defence was very good have to say that she was well coached, nice to see the improvements a world class fighter can make with a good coaching team….. At least koscheck got, well good at striking at the expense of his grappling, RR striking looked to have regressed as well lol, I know she was up against a world class striker, and I didn’t expect her to look that good out in the open, but I thought she would do well in the clinch. but when she got the clinch her knees (usually so devastating for her) were none existent Surely any half decent coach would have not bothered with too much striking drills, after all you aren’t going to out strike HH in a pure kick boxing match, but made you work your closing game, your clinch and throw game and made damn sure when you got it to the ground you stayed tight and kept it there? RR looked like she had done none of that, and the advice during the break coming from her corner was terrible
Spoiler Ronda's jab has never been very good. But the other issue is the total lack of defense everyone Edmond trains has. If you watch Marina Shafir's last fight she got hit with pretty much every straight punch thrown at her which is exactly what happened to Ronda. As I was watching the fight I kept calling for Holly to use her own jab but it ended up being completely unnecessary because Holly could land straight lefts with impunity. And would check hook as she pivoted away from Ronda's advance. I don't remember Ronda blocking or slipping even a single punch Holly threw. Holly could just throw power all day. Spoiler Spoiler I have been saying the exact same thing you said there in the bold on other forums and people are still arguing about it. But Matt Serra didn't outclass GSP, he caught him. One punch basically created that outcome. Holly Holm brutalized RR from the opening bell to the final kick. It is much closer to Joanna's fight with Carla. Furthermore I think the reality is that other then Sara McMann this is the first truly elite athlete that Ronda has ever faced in her career. There is nothing Edmond was capable of training her to deal with this. She absolutely needs a new camp. She can't go to Jackson's, since Holly is there. But I think AKA, ATT, etc might be a good place to start.
Spoiler Firas Zahabi did a good break down and watching that Rousey actually did better than I remember her doing. Just a few little details Holm got right shut down Rousey's game.
Firas from Tristar Gym's breakdown. SPOILER ALERT [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3stwtCmWTA"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3stwtCmWTA[/ame]
Spoiler RR did ok in that she did manage to get to the clinch and get a takedown, but didn’t manage to do anything with it. Other than that she got outclassed convincingly on her feet, and even in the clinch. Ill concede OC point, I honestly didn’t think there was a world class striker in MMA to worry RR, and nothing I had seen from HH in her pervious UFC fights had pointed to her being this good, going the full distance with two mid-range journeyman fighters…. But she had either been holding something back or the stars aligned for her in her camp and she worked her backside off with a great game plan from a great coaching staff
Spoiler Before the fight with Rocky, Holly sustained a serious neck injury that required surgery. The details never got released but it postponed Holly's debut. I still feel she was cautious coming back from that injury. Looks like she got over it in the nick of time.
She landed some decent punches, she did some nice arm control stuff and she did half a dozen decent clinch entries. Holm was very good and Jackson had worked his magic and figured out the perfect gameplan. Ironically it was a gameplan that relied on Rousey complying with it and sadly for her she went along with it.
