It’s always taken for granted that the heavier fighters are the more dangerous fighters. Every champion is the best in his or her division, he or she may be the best pound for pound fighter in the world, but only one fighter is “The Baddest Fighter on the Planet”, and that’s the Heavyweight champion. He is the only fighter who would probably beat everybody else if there were no weight limits, and that stands to reason. We implemented the weight system because we know size matters.
For some reason this does not apply to Ronda Rousey. She is considered a lot of times as the most dangerous woman fighter in the world, who supposedly can beat 50% of men fighters and beat Floyd Mayweather in an MMA fight. While all this time there is a whole division of women fighters who are heavier than her, which nobody says any of these things about. We don’t really know how Rousey would fare against those women since she never fought any of them or at that weight – yet she is the one talked about as the most formidable woman fighter.
This situation is even more ridiculous considering that this heavier division has its own undefeated undisputed champion who smashes everyone she is facing and in fact has been doing so for a very long time, since before Rousey has even started MMA. Cristiane Justino has been considered the undisputed woman champion for a long time before Ronda Rousey got to be, and rightfully so. Ronda Rousey has taken her spot because she is American, more beautiful, more marketable and, most importantly, fights in the UFC.
In UFC 184’s press conference Dana White was asked what hinders the fight between Rousey and Justino from happening, and why wouldn’t Rousey fight at 145 instead of Justino coming down to 135, which is impossible for her. White said that it doesn’t make sense since people should chase the champ and not the other way around. With this statement White completely dismissed the fact that Justino is a champion herself, has been champion for much longer than Rousey, has been considered just as dominant as Rousey for a long time, and is the champion of the heavier division, which means she is the “badder” woman fighter. Considering all that I think it’s quite obvious Rousey is the one who should be chasing Justino and not the other way around.
Besides, we all know of past champions who did fight at weight classes above their own. Anderson Silva, of course, and BJ Penn, who fought (and beat) the champion at Welterweight. And now there is talk of Jose Aldo fighting Anthony Pettis, and I think we all know Pettis won’t go all the way down to 145.
But the most important point is that it just makes sense. The general assumption is that the heavier fighter will beat the lighter fighter in an open weight fight. Fighters are moving to lighter weight classes because they can’t handle the size of the fighters in the heavier weight class. In other words they know they will lose, so they choose to compete against easier opposition. Therefore, if fighters of different weight classes want to fight each other, they should do it at the heavier weight class. Rousey could make 145 very easily. In fact she makes if for every fight she has ever been in. Justino, apparently, couldn’t make 135 if her life depended on it. So what’s the issue?
The only issue is that Dana White doesn’t want to hurt the name of the UFC by having a UFC champion lose to someone from outside of the UFC, especially a superstar like Ronda Rousey, who might be exposed in that fight and reveal the truth that she is not the baddest woman on the planet, just the champion of her division, and that the baddest women fighters are, in fact, outside of the UFC.