By Gareth A Davies
The Daily Telegraph
Two women meet in a UFC Octagon combat arena for the first time on Saturday night. At what they are calling the “Ronda Center” — Anaheim’s Honda Center — Ronda Rousey will take centre stage in California and make history, headlining the UFC 157 card against Liz Carmouche.
The UFC PR has been in full swing — juggernaut-like — since it was first announced several weeks ago. The catalyst has been the blond bombshell who won an Olympic medal and transferred her physical skills and good looks to professional fight sport.
There has been careful placement here, too, of Carmouche, something of a sacrificial lamb in this process, though by any standards, Carmouche is a fascinating subject herself.
Openly gay, she served as a Marine Corps sergeant as a helicopter mechanical technician in the Middle East on three tours of duty.
The raft of interest and interviews have uncovered the finest detail this week as two women’s lives have come under the spotlight, with an accompanying documentary ‘primetime’ series, normally reserved for the biggest pay per view fights in the world.
“It’s great. It’s awesome. It’s cool. I’m not complaining,” Rousey told USA Today this week. But then admits she is feeling the pressure.
The extraordinary rise and rise Rousey, from a 12-year-old judo prodigy, to Olympic bronze medallist in Beijing in 2008, has captured the media’s attention. Carmouche, understandably, has remarked that there is no pressure on her.
Rousey’s mother, AnnMaria Rousey DeMars, a former world judo champion herself, had always thought Ronda would be the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport. Rousey competed at the 2004 Olympics as a 17-year-old, failing to return to the USA as a medallist. She went back as a 21-year-old and won a bronze.
Between Beijing and the start of her MMA career, she alternated shifts as a cocktail waitress and bartender, but four years into her MMA career, Rousey, now 26, has won six professional bouts, all in the first round with her signature move, a ripping armbar submission.
Yet her biggest conquest is the UFC, and UFC President Dana White, who admits he was won over by every facet of her: from fighter to figurehead, to filly.
The likelihood if the pay per view stacks up, is that within a year she will become the UFC’s first female dollar millionaire in earnings.
Ten months ago, I had a dinner with Rousey and a group of ten others in Las Vegas, and what you see is what you get. High-heeled, long-haired and with the Olympic rings tattooed on her ankle, she cut quite a swathe.
At that point, she was on course to fight Miesha Tate, then the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight champion, and she duly won the title.
At the time, the UFC had bought out its rival mixed martial arts organisation.
“In judo and at the Olympics, I was carrying the weight of everyone’s expectations and trying to prove people right that I could win the Olympics. I didn’t like that. I want it to be just for me, not for other people. I like proving people wrong more than proving people right,” Rousey explained this week.
In London last week, UFC president White reckoned she has the lot. She certainly changed him. “I wasn’t an advocate of women in the UFC, but Rousey changed my mind on that. She has everything,” he said.
“Everybody was talking about her hands two years ago,” White said of Rousey. “Look at her f****** hands now. I know things you guys don’t know about her and what she’s doing as far as her hands go. I’d love to see guys go spar with her. She is tough, she is mean, and she is nasty. She’s mean, man. She’s a tough chick.”
“I’ve heard some flak about the girls,” White added. “But their mitt work is better than half the guys. Their hands are great, they’re well-rounded, they represent the sport well, they represent themselves well. I couldn’t be happier that I made the decision and I couldn’t be happier with this fight.”
“The media is following her because she’s legit – she’s the real deal,” White said following the post-event news conference for UFC on FUEL TV 7 in London. “She’s a world-class athlete who won an Olympic medal. How do you not respect that? How do you not respect someone who’s been training since they were 6 years old and medaled in the Olympics, and has worked as hard as she has to round out her game as a martial artist, too?”
As the pay per view event gathered momentum this week, so the revelation of more detail from the life of Rousey. Rousey is 5ft 6ins tall, cuts to 135 pounds to fight, is educated, and gets how the media and fight sport works. Her mother has a doctorate in educational psychology.
When Rousey was a little girl, her father suffered a broken back in a sledding accident. Given a short time to live, he committed suicide. Ronda was 8.
As a young child, she could barely speak. As a teenager she was beset by shyness. But not in recent years. Rousey famously attacked swimmer Michael Phelps on a YouTube video.
“Get over yourself. All you do is swim. If someone slapped you every single time you jumped in the pool, then I’d have a little more respect.”
Rousey qualified that in the interview with USA Today this week. “In the Olympics, it’s kind of like you’re supposed to act like Miss America and talk about world peace,” she says. “I like having that freedom now. I like having that room for error, that whole bad girl thing.”
Also on the Anaheim card, lightheavyweights Lyoto Machida and Dan Henderson – also a US Olympian as a wrestler – go to war. For once, in spite of the male fighting talent on the card, the women will overshadow the men.