Fading fast: Ronda Rousey shows how quickly the 'where are they now' point can be reached

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Remember Rousey? Only two years ago she wasn’t merely a superstar, she was a superhero. Wonder Woman with no headband but a complement of black belts instead. She was The World’s Most Dangerous Woman, as Rolling Stone headlined a 2015 story. At SI she was The World’s Most Dominant Athlete. It didn’t seem hyperbolic. In Rousey’s first 12 professional MMA fights, only one challenger made it beyond Round 1. At UFC 175 she finished off her opponent in 16 seconds. In her next fight she needed 14. “She’s unreal,” UFC impresario Dana White told SI then. “It’s like, Are you for real?”

When Rousey fought, the suspense wasn’t in the outcome, it was in how her badassness would reveal itself. She punched and kicked and won one fight by delivering a vicious knee to the body. But her signature move was the arm bar, hyperextending the opponent’s elbow and occasioning a tap-out before, as she once described it to me, “ligaments will begin popping like guitar strings.”
That was the other thing about Rousey: She was as generous with her sound bites as she was with her time. Asked a question, Rousey gave an answer. She was a media darling and a social media darling, at one point adding a million Instragram followers a month. She would show up at an awards show one night and a march honoring the victims of Armenian genocide the next. And there were Hollywood roles, playing Kara in Furious 7 and playing herself in the otherwise unwatchable Entourage movie.
One of the ironies of MMA is that for all its brutality, it accommodates defeat. Mayweather may be 49–0, but in MMA such a record would be laughable. “Everybody f---ing loses. It’s part of the sport,” says Demetrious Johnson, the UFC’s flyweight champion, who’s 26–2–1. “It’s all about how you deal with it.”

In Rousey’s case the dealing has not gone well. Once omnipresent, she was suddenly nowhere. Once omnipotent, she was, by her own reckoning, stripped of power. In one of the few interviews she’s given in the last 18 months, she told Ellen DeGeneres that after her first loss, “I was down in the corner, and I was like, What am I anymore if I’m not this? I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself, and that exact second I’m like, I’m nothing. What do I do anymore? and No one gives a s--- about me anymore without this.”

While Rousey fought every few months during her heyday, she idled for more than a year. Finally, she decided to reenter the octagon to try and win back the bantamweight belt. But it came with a condition: Suddenly phobic of publicity, she would do no prefight media. In what was, notionally, her comeback fight, last Dec. 30, she lost in 48 seconds.

And then she really partitioned herself from the public. Rousey did a news cycle cameo in May to say that she would captain a team on the Battle of the Network Stars reboot. She announced her engagement to UFC heavyweight Travis Browne. But otherwise she’s gone ghost. Among it all, there’s no indication that Rousey, now 30, will fight again. And posing the question isn’t an option. Asked for an interview, her team sent back word that she would consider the request but “know in advance she won’t discuss anything fight-related.”
It’s a reminder that sports celebrity has its own set of thermodynamics. The same way Rousey won fights in record time, her star has dimmed with unforgiving speed. If nothing else, it might be instructive for McGregor. There’s a delicacy to greatness. Quickly, in sports, the future melds into the present and then the past. One day the inquiry is, “Are you for real?”

Blink and it’s, “Where Are They Now?”
https://www.si.com/mma/2017/06/28/r...m&utm_medium=social&xid=socialflow_twitter_si
 
I think the quickness with which you fall depends on your appeal too. Ronda was largely about hype, quick wins, instant gratification, and being brash and disrespectful. People who are into that aren't going to stick around when things get tough.

By contrast, a lot of people, myself included, still backed Holly when she was on a 3-fight losing streak, because of the type of person she is.
 
No Conor, no Rousey, no Germaine de Randamie.

The UFC is dead.
 
I think the quickness with which you fall depends on your appeal too. Ronda was largely about hype, quick wins, instant gratification, and being brash and disrespectful. People who are into that aren't going to stick around when things get tough.

By contrast, a lot of people, myself included, still backed Holly when she was on a 3-fight losing streak, because of the type of person she is.

She rubbed everyone the wrong way and in a sport that ends miserably in a defeat, it was banking on a lot of stupidity. Also, women tend to slip fast as they get up in age
 
Well when your a permanent nob head like Ronda you reap what you sow

Her antics on TUF for me were the biggest downfall, the celebration when Holm beat her was so weird, it wasn't just an upset it literally felt like good conquering evil
 
She rubbed everyone the wrong way and in a sport that ends miserably in a defeat, it was banking on a lot of stupidity. Also, women tend to slip fast as they get up in age
Totally agreed, but it should be pointed out that Ronda lost to Holly at 28-years-old.
 
She rubbed everyone the wrong way and in a sport that ends miserably in a defeat, it was banking on a lot of stupidity. Also, women tend to slip fast as they get up in age

Rousey is barely 30 years old...

{<jordan}
 
And the world is so much better for it.

Never forget:

ronda-rousey-knock-out-ko.gif
 
Shes making a sandwich for travis.
Doing the things women are born to do.
Not punching eachother in the face.

She gotta know she hitting her 30s with a lifetime of competition, sweaty gi, bad attitude, bad boxing and edmond. Her father killed himself.

Her mma skills are no longer top and athletes are passing her by at a rate she cant catch up to. Hollywood can always cast a younger, finer phresh piece. Travis can always cast a younger finer phresh piece.

Thats reality.
 
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Well when your a permanent nob head like Ronda you reap what you sow

Her antics on TUF for me were the biggest downfall, the celebration when Holm beat her was so weird, it wasn't just an upset it literally felt like good conquering evil

Excellent point sir.

All she had to do was come back right away. And she did, but not only was it too late, she acted absolutely terrible. No interviews, no talks about how shell prepare for this after the loss, just a brat, pouting away.

Honestly, i predicted this exact behavior, but i thought it would take 2 losses without any long breaks. Little did i know how much people loved her first loss. Truly epic.

A Once in a Lifetime Loss, you could say...
 
Well when your a permanent nob head like Ronda you reap what you sow

Her antics on TUF for me were the biggest downfall, the celebration when Holm beat her was so weird, it wasn't just an upset it literally felt like good conquering evil
She didn't just knockout the most irritating fighter possibly ever, the dominant way she won collapsed an insane mountain of BS. It was like watching all of North Korea fall apart in 5 minutes.
 
Wow. I'll never get tired of watching that. I remember waking up the whole house when that fight happened!

And the world is so much better for it.

Never forget:

ronda-rousey-knock-out-ko.gif
 
Wow. I'll never get tired of watching that. I remember waking up the whole house when that fight happened!

I was working at a bar at the time with a lot of co-workers who were lesbians, SJWs and die-hard liberals. It was glorious to see their tears as their idol was torn down.
 
As quick as you rise you can fall just as fast. But I truly believe RR wasnt just hype. She was dominant. Some good wins. Hype machines are like:
Houston Alexander
Soko
Duffee
Nover
 
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