From Bronze Medalist to A-lister: Analyzing Ronda Rousey’s Stardom

As of writing this, we are two days removed from UFC 190 and we all know which fighter has been receiving the most buzz after the event…

…That fighter is of course Stefan Struve who picked apart Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira on the feet for three rounds in a fight that was more than likely Big Nog’s last appearance inside the Octagon, thus ending a career that has lasted over a decade and has produced many memorable moments. Oh, and some fighter named Ronda Rousey won too.

Jokes aside, Ronda Rousey once again showed us why she is without a doubt the best female fighter in the world. Hell, I’d even go as far as saying that with her performance at UFC 190, Rousey showed the world that she is the most dominant fighter in the UFC. And yes, there is a difference between “the best fighter” in the UFC and the “most dominant” fighter in the UFC. Ronda dominates her opponents. This is regardless of how thin her division is or how large the gap in skill is between Rousey and her opponents. You don’t see Jose Aldo or Demetrious Johnson finishing their opponents in less than a minute very often now, do you? Rousey brawled with the brawler in Bethe Correia, made her respect her power and hand speed, and ultimately made Correia faceplant like she dropped her contacts and tried to pick them back up with her face. This tweet sums it up perfectly.

Following UFC 190, I didn’t know what to write about. Should I write about the Rousey/Correia fight and Rousey’s future in the UFC or should I write about the superstar Rousey has become before and especially after her fight with Correia? I couldn’t really choose so this article will be part 1 of my Rousey recap. In this first installment, I will cover Rousey’s stardom but don’t worry my analytic article of the UFC 190 main event and Rousey’s future will come later on this week. I want to do some extra research before I give you guys in-depth analysis of Rousey’s performance.

Another reason why I wanted to cover the buzz behind Ronda Rousey first is because I’ve never seen this much talk on social media about an MMA event before in my life. From Kobe Bryant, to Lil Wayne, to even the guy on One Direction that isn’t named Harry or Zayn (I still miss you, btw), it seems every major celebrity and their grandmothers tweeted in support for Ronda Rousey going into her title defense in Rio de Janeiro. In fact, #UFC190 was tweeted about 993k times. That’s an outstanding number for an MMA event especially when considering that #UFC189, which was so far the best card of the year, had the best fight of the year, AND had two title fights (one being headlined by some guy named Conor McGregor) was only tweeted 424k times. This is even more mind-blowing when looking at the PPV portion of the card as a whole. To put it bluntly, most of the card besides the co-main, which I didn’t have high expectations for, and main event, was mediocre. Yes, there were some fun moments and highlights but for the most part, this seven-fight card that lasted well into the night dragged on for the majority of the show (I’m not pointing any fingers *cough* *cough* TUF Finale fights). In addition, I saw numerous posts on Instagram of UFC 190 viewing parties which I only see when Filipinos watch Manny Pacquiao fights. Not even the return of Anderson Silva, arguably the GOAT in MMA, at UFC 183 caused any videos of drunken fans yelling and screaming at their TVs to appear on my Instagram timeline. So how did this all happen? How did Ronda Rousey become such a superstar in not only MMA but a bonafide A-list celebrity?

I could go on for hours about Ronda Rousey’s MMA career and all the steps she took from being a prospect fighting at 145 pounds on Strikeforce Challengers cards to being the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion and a mega-star but I won’t. To put it simply, “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey has the whole package. She’s a smart, charismatic woman who can submit you in the Octagon just as fast as she can knock you unconscious. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that she is pretty damn good looking to boot. Ronda is changing how people view beauty and how they view women’s sports. Her combination of beauty and skill paired with her “I don’t give a damn what you think” attitude has turned Rousey into one of the most captivating figures in all of sports. Some say that Rousey is the Mike Tyson of MMA but she’s not. She’s not Floyd, Ali, or any other great combat athlete. She’s uniquely Ronda Rousey, an athlete who appears only once in every lifetime. No one in any combat sport, male or female, has made an impact like Ronda Rousey and that’s a good thing.

In addition, one thing that I don’t see too often mentioned in Ronda Rousey articles is that the timing of Rousey’s arrival to the scene couldn’t have been better. For some odd reason, a lot of people are just now starting to realize that women can do anything just as well as their male counterparts. Think about it. Why wasn’t Gina Carano as big a star as Rousey back in her prime in around 2008/2009? She certainly was beautiful and definitely kicked ass back when she was an active MMA fighter. Sure, she’s starting to gain stardom now but it’s for her skills in the cinemas, not her fighting skills which she gave up on years ago. Why hasn’t Cris Cyborg received as much attention as Rousey? She’s just as dominant as Ronda, demolishing most of her MMA opponents in less than a round but you don’t see her making appearances in movies or in the WWE ring. The difference between these two fighters and Rousey is that Rousey is in her prime during an era that needs a strong, beautiful female to empower women. Rousey has become an inspiration to many females and has shown the world that a woman can do anything a man can do just as well, if not better. Now I’m not saying that if Gina Carano and Cris Cyborg were in their primes and in the UFC today that they could surpass Rousey in terms of popularity but there’s a reason why thousands of young girls are taking up MMA, kickboxing, and Jiu-Jitsu classes nowadays compared to back in 2008/2009.

Ronda Rousey is the UFC’s biggest star because she crosses boundaries into the mainstream like no other UFC star. And to think, Dana White said himself years ago that we’ll never see women fight in the Octagon. Oh how the times have changed.

Welcome to Technical Elbows

In MMA, you can throw technically skilled elbows but in the basketball, throwing elbows will get you a technical. Get it? #bars

Crappy wordplay aside, welcome to Technical Elbows, a sports blog where I will be covering both MMA (not just the UFC) and the NBA. I’m gonna be real with y’all, if you’re looking for breaking news, don’t come here. I’m neither part of “the industry” nor a journalist/journalism student. There are plenty of other sites you can use for details on the latest stories. If you’re looking for in-depth analysis (or at least my attempts at in-depth analysis), opinions on hot topics surrounding these two wonderful sports, or event recaps, this is your place.

You might be asking yourself, “Why would I need to visit this blog if I an go to any big-name sports website and get the same information?” Well long story short, you don’t need to visit this site. I’m gonna keep it real, I’m doing this sports blogging thing because I want to do it. A friend once asked me what my dream job is regardless of income or schooling. I answered, “becoming a high school history teacher or becoming a sports journalist.” I am pursuing the former and this is my attempt at the latter.  It doesn’t matter if I’m getting 3 views per year on this site as a whole or if I’m getting 30,000 views per article, I’m going to keep doing this blog because I want to. Even without this blog, I’d still be formulating my own thoughts on the MMA and basketball world so I figured that I should at least write my ideas down. Whether or not people enjoy my articles or agree with my opinions is their choice, not mine.

Since Technical Elbows is nowhere near a professional news outlet, I am going to try to keep my articles as chill as possible while also presenting my ideas in a strong manner. In addition, since I am just a fan and not a professional journalist, I’ll try to communicate to the readers of my articles in the same way I would when talking to my buddies about sports. So don’t be surprised if you see bad puns, admittedly biased opinions, and/or Drake references in my articles. In a sense, my writing goal is to be as witty as Chuck Mindenhall but at the same time as opinionated and analytic as Luke Thomas (If you’re an MMA fan and haven’t read any of their articles, please do yourself a favor and visit MMAFighting.com). Think of this blog as kind of the SourceFed of sports journalism, somewhere between ESPN and The Onion.

So before I close out this introduction to Technical Elbows, I feel like y’all should know at least a little bit about myself. I am horrible with introductions and I don’t want to make this too long, so here’s some basic information about myself with a little bit on how I fell in love with MMA and basketball and why I started  this blog. Well, my name is Matt Franco and I’m a current junior at the University of Connecticut pursuing a degree in Secondary Social Studies Education. Does that cover the “basic information about myself” portion adequately? I think so, so we can move on.

Let’s start with the basketball side of things first. Growing up in a Filipino household, I’ve always been around basketball. I never played youth hoops but I grew up in a family that loved the NBA. Being around grandparent who could name you every star on every NBA team during the 1980s and 1990s, my uncle who grew up in the MJ Era, and my dad who is a diehard Celtics fan really trained me to love the game. As for me, well, I am a diehard Magic fan (maybe I’ll explain why in a future article) as well as a diehard UConn hoops fan, although I will admit that my knowledge on college basketball as a whole is lacking so don’t expect a lot of articles on college hoops. But my love for basketball doesn’t just revolve around watching my favorite teams and players play. When I’m not watching or writing about basketball, you can catch me shooting in the gym (shoutout to Drake) or playing pickup games with my friends who call me, “Shooter,” a name given to me by an opposing team when we played intramural hoops. I guess you can say that ball is li… actually let me hold back on that.

As for the MMA side of things, here’s where things get a little interesting. I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve been following the sport since UFC 1 because if my calculations are correct, I was -2 years old when that event took place. Actually, the first full card I watched was UFC 117. I watched the whole card including the prelims but I didn’t fall head over heels in love with MMA until after the main event, when I saw a man who was thought to be unstoppable submit a man who was dominating the fight for 4 and a half rounds. I remember jumping up from my couch and actually screaming in joy, bothering my parents who at the time, did not know a thing about MMA. From then on, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the sport. I would watch old fights from Pride and prior UFC events to try and learn everything I could about this sport. Nowadays, I’m still in love with MMA to the point where sometimes, I don’t know which sport i prefer more, MMA or basketball. I try my best to watch every event (although I will admit that I’ve missed more than a few due to my college schedule) and I try to not keep my MMA viewing exclusively to the UFC. I watch Bellator, WSOF, and basically any major league MMA promotion that is available to the US. I just want to clarify this because every diehard MMA fan knows at least 2 people who think that “UFC” is a sport and think “MMA” is just some abbreviated name for some Fortune-500 company. This is usually the same guy who thinks he’s a diehard MMA fan because he saw Ronda Rousey hit Bethe Correia harder than Drake hit Meek Mill when he dropped “Back to Back Freestyle” but couldn’t even begin to explain the intricacies of Demian Maia’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that he displayed against Neil Magny on the same card. Is my inner MMA-snob showing? Yeah? I guess I’ll stop there.

As for why I decided to start this blog, aside from the aforementioned conversation I had with my friend in the library while studying for finals, I’ve always loved writing. This first profession that I can remember wanting to pursue as a young child was being an author. Although my dream of being a best-selling author did not come to fruition, my love of writing is still a big part of who I am today. I’m probably in the minority here but in college, I’m the type of student that would prefer to write a 10-page research essay instead of taking an exam any day.In addition, I truly admire the effects of a great speech or article on an audience. A well-written speech or article can evoke many emotions from an audience whether it be anger, sadness, happiness, or inspiration. I’ve had a couple opportunities in my lifetime so far to channel people’s emotions through writing with the use of speeches for elections, weddings, etc. So to be able to do what I love to do for two sports that I love to watch was only a matter of time.

To wrap things up, all I’m going to say is that since the NBA season has yet to start, expect a good amount of MMA articles on this blog for now. Of course, if there’s any groundbreaking news surrounding the NBA, I’ll be sure to cover it. Expect my first official article coming in the next couple days. Until then, be safe, wear a condom, and don’t get yourself killed. Again, welcome to Technical Elbows and thank you for reading.