Ronda Rousey vows to punish Bethe Correia at UFC 190
If you want a clear indicator of just how dominant UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is, consider that the big question fans and media are debating ahead of her main-event bout at UFC 190 in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday (10 p.m. ET pay-per-view) isn’t whether she’ll beat challenger Bethe Correia — it’s how quickly.
And, lest you assume that faster is better, at least when it comes to proving one’s superiority over an opponent in the cage, you should know that this is the rare situation where you might be wrong.
On paper, there’s no good reason to think Correia (9-0 mixed martial arts, 3-0 UFC) stands a chance of beating Rousey (11-0, 5-0). The Brazilian challenger’s unbeaten record might look like a match for the champion’s, but not every winning streak is created equal.
For instance, the three opponents Correia has faced in the UFC so far are a combined 1-7. The fact that two of those opponents happened to be Rousey’s friends and teammates, whom Correia gleefully picked off as if in a conscious effort to get the champ’s attention, is at least part of the reason why she’s getting this title shot in her home country, despite being an 18-1 underdog according to some oddsmakers.
The other part is there’s simply no one else left in the UFC women’s bantamweight division. Rousey has demolished the four fighters below her in the UFC’s official women’s 135-pound rankings.
The only one of those four to make it out of the first round against Rousey is current top contender Miesha Tate, whom Rousey has already beaten twice. Of the three UFC title defenses that followed Rousey’s second win against Tate, the longest — a TKO victory over Olympic silver medalist wrestler Sara McMann — took a little more than a minute. The other two lasted a combined 30 seconds.
This is what Rousey is known for, these quick and easy victories. After winning the bronze medal in judo at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, she tried her hand at amateur MMA in 2010 and then went pro in 2011. And it wasn’t until her rematch with Tate in 2013 that she needed more than one round to put away any opponent.
Correia would seem to be a prime candidate for another early night. She’s smaller than Rousey, nowhere near as powerful or athletic, and nothing about the grappling prowess she’s demonstrated so far in the UFC gives us any reason to think she’ll be able to avoid Rousey’s signature submission, the armbar.
Nothing, that is, except for Rousey’s promise to take her time and make Correia’s punishment last.
After Correia mocked Rousey’s teammates in her post-fight celebrations, then appeared to take a jab at the suicide death of Rousey’s father in interviews leading up to this fight, Rousey vowed to make Correia suffer, to humiliate her in addition to defeating her.
"Some things take longer," Rousey said in May. "Like, a choke takes longer than an armbar, and a TKO takes longer than the choke. I might go for the prolonged finish instead."
You might think that would make her something of a villain in Brazil, where she’ll be fighting in Correia’s backyard, but as former UFC heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira pointed out when Rousey was mobbed by adoring Brazilian fans during this week’s open workouts in Rio, Rousey’s star power eclipses her country of origin.
"Ronda now looks like the Mike Tyson of the (female fighters)," Nogueira says. "She has no nationality."
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That comparison is apt in terms of more than just pure celebrity. Like Tyson, Rousey’s penchant for quick finishes makes her fights seem at times like they aren’t competitive enough to be worth the $59.99 purchase price on PPV. Unlike Tyson, she lives in an age when fights like her last one — a 14-second submission win against Cat Zingano — show up on the Internet in their entirety mere minutes after the fight is over.
In that sense, Rousey’s promise to "drag it out and make the finish more exciting" might be the best possible selling point for what looks like a colossal mismatch. Rousey flipping another over-matched opponent onto her head, then extending her arm until she quits or has her elbow ruined, all in less time than it takes to microwave a cup of soup? We’ve seen that. A vengeful Rousey expressing her violent wrath in patient, excruciating strokes? That would be something new.
As the fight draws closer, however, Rousey has begun walking back that promise somewhat. She admits she got "chewed out" by her mother, another former judo champion, for planning to prolong the bout. The longer the fight goes, even against an opponent as out of her depth as Correia seems to be, the more stressful it will be on her mother, Rousey notes.
"But I’m going to be so dominant in every single second of it," Rousey says. "Even though it’s going to be longer, she’s not going to have to see her baby get hit."
Ben Fowlkes writes for MMAjunkie. Follow on Twitter @benfowlkesMMA.
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