Ronda Rousey armbars Sarah Kaufman

Strikeforce women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey ran through Sarah Kaufman on Saturday night the same way castor oil runs though senior citizens. It was her sixth consecutive first round win, and her sixth win via armbar submission.

It’s a move she has perfected as her world champion judo mom used to make her drill the move as a youngster. She wastes no time in going for the submission, opponents know it’s coming and still can’t stop it.

That’s incredible.

There are many people that are starting to wonder if there are any legitimate challengers for Rousey. She did call out the one challenger that everyone wants to see her fight in Cyborg Santos on Saturday night during her post-fight interview.

Santos is the former Strikeforce featherweight champion, but was stripped of her title earlier this year after testing positive for steroids. Santos is one of the few women in MMA that can match the strength of Rousey or may even be stronger.

She possesses huge power in both of her hands, and is versed in submissions although the lone loss on her record came via submission in her first professional fight in 2005.

However, Rousey insists that Santos come down to 135 pounds to fight her and the jury is still out on if Santos can cut that much weight. Santos will also have been out of action for well over a year if/when this bout takes place. So she’ll have to overcome two huge obstacles if she’s to take out Rousey.

Then there’s Miesha Tate who lost her title to Rousey in March of this year. Tate is the one fighter to enjoy what some would call success against Rousey in their fight as she almost made it to the second round against her.

Tate was victorious against Julie Kedzie on Saturday night in what was a great fight overall, but Tate didn’t look as sharp in that fight even though she got the win. A rematch would be doable since they both talked a ton of smack leading up to the first fight coupled with how competitive the first fight was.

The dark horse challenger would be Sara McMann who fights for the Invicta Fighting Championship. McMann is an Olympic Silver Medalist wrestler who could also arguably match the strength and power of Rousey.

McMann defeated MMA veteran Shayna Baszler via unanimous decision in a very close fight in her last outing. McMann undoubtedly needs to improve her striking game and appears to be doing so, but it would be an interesting matchup to see if she could defend the takedowns of Rousey.

If this fight were to ever take place it would be quite a while for now and would allow McMann to continue to improve as a fighter.

The scary part is that it would allow Rousey to do the same thing as they both only have six professional fights in their careers. Which of these three fighters do you think would have a legitimate shot at beating Rousey?

5 thoughts on “Ronda Rousey: Are there any legitimate challengers left for her?”
  1. None of them could beat ronda! You could throw coenen in there too; i’m guessing she still wants to prove herself against ronda, although since ronda’s 54 second dismantling of kaufman, nobody’s heard a peep from coenen, and the peeps we have heard from tate and cyroid show both of them wanting nothing to do with a fight with ronda!

    If cyroid is stupid enough to get in the cage with ronda, ronda will not only submit her in the 1st round, she will probably break cyroid’s arm to boot!

    Ronda Rousey is simply in a league by herself. There’s no one in women’s mma with that kind of skill level and athleticism.

  2. Ehh…I would say Cyborg has a decent shot(if the fight was at 145lbs)…but the long layoff would make me hesitate to pull the trigger…I agree on Coenen in regards to being mentioned…but I don’t think she has a realistic shot at all of beating Rousey. Thanks for commenting!

  3. RR should be them all pretty easily. Santos has an outside chance at any weight IF she can come in clean. McMann has less skills now but will provide a fight sooner or later. The rest are just victoms waiting to get a big payday.

Leave a Reply