goopy20 said:
True, female MMA is just still in its infancy, especially when it comes to striking. Rousey's standup is also mediocre and she would get knocked the hell out in seconds by any half decent striker if is she threw those wild haymakers that she used in her last fight. However, in the women's UFC division there just isn't any fighter that could really make her pay in the stand-up, except for maybe Cyborg, but the UFC doesn't want that fight to happen and risk Rousey losing to some fugly chick that has no marketing appeal at all. Funny thing is that people now make it seem like Judo is the ultimate combat sport and she's destroying everybody because we never seen a Judo Olympian compete in MMA.. There have been ton of male Judo Olympians in MMA and judo alone never got them very far. BJJ is basically a more efficient form of judo and 90% of the male fighters got a pretty good BJJ base nowadays. Just look at this match where you got a Judo Olympian vs Renzo Gracie's BJJ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BErIY92RufI Or Akiyama vs Jerome Le Banner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oat0OFuB24o In theory it shouldn't be to hard for the female fighters to come up with some sort of gameplan to counter Rousey's Judo. The problem, I think, is that female fighters don't get the kind of support that the male fighters are getting because they're still not taking seriously. I mean male fighters have specialists fly in all the time to prepare for a fight, but I kinda doubt Holly Holm will be able to do that. |
Joanna Jędrzejczyk has impressive striking. Relentless and accurate. I was also pretty impressed with Joanne Calderwood although hers is a Muay Thai style boxing rather than pure boxing, which generally translates pretty poorly in MMA anyway.
I'm not that impressed with Cris Justino's striking. As much as I'm a fan of Pride FC era Wanderlei Silva balls to the walls striking, it's pretty far from technical and in my opinion, Justino is essentially a female Wanderlei. She's impressive in the way she imposes her will and aggression on her opponents and almost exclusively uses size and strength to overwhelm everyone, but after seeing her look very beatable in her loss against Jorina Baars, it really emphasized how Justino wins all her fights.
I think part of the problem with women's MMA currently, is that there are fewer full time pros. Not earning as much means having to work for a living for most of the fighters (same as the men prior to finding moderate success). Women have only recently started headlining events in the UFC and most of those were headlined by Rousey, who I believe is currently the UFC's biggest draw. Obviously there's a huge drop from Rousey to the second most marketable female fighter. I'd be curious to see how many fighters in Invicta FC fight full time.
I don't know why anyone would think Judo is the new best skill set for MMA, barring those who really haven't been following the sport long. If anyone could name one other UFC champion or even contender with a primary Judo background, I'd like to hear it.
It's not Judo, it's Rousey. Granted, her Judo is ridiculously good, but this really only emphasizes the individual, not the sport.
