COLUMBUS, Ohio — The buildup to Saturday night's Strikeforce women's bantamweight championship fight between flashy newcomer Ronda Rousey and champion Miesha Tate seemed to include some genuine hatred between the competitors.
Rousey needed a little under 4 1/2 minutes to prove she's the genuine item.
A rare women's fight headlining a marquee mixed martial arts card could be the launching pad not only for the women's division but for a real superstar. The biggest fight of Rousey's young career also was her longest, but she ended it at 4:27 of the first round by locking in an armbar and locking up her first championship.
The fight ended when Tate, her face contorted in pain, tapped out with her one free hand.
The armbar applied by Rousey, a 2008 Olympic judo bronze medalist, was the same one she locked in to win each of her previous four professional fights. She's been bold and brash because that's her nature — and because she's good.
"I think a star was born tonight," Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker said. "It's onward and upward from here for the female division."
The main event of a rather bland Strikeforce card at Nationwide Arena featured fast-paced action and both fighters taking an aggressive approach. Rousey took Tate down first and locked in a looser armbar than the one that eventually won it.
But Tate escaped and responded by landing a pair of powerful blows to Rousey's face, and then was able to keep Rousey on the mat with a headlock. She landed two more punches before getting taken down about 3:30 into the fight, and less than a minute later it was over as Rousey bent Tate's left arm back — and then further back.
"I tried to get in her head over the last few months because I prefer to fight emotional opponents," Rousey said. "I wanted her on edge so that she would be more likely to come at me. She came in swinging, and that’s what I was expecting."
Of the painful finisher, she said,. "I don't feel that bad about it."
The fight was Tate's 15th since turning pro in 2007. She had won six fights in a row and wasn't shy about saying she felt Rousey hadn't yet earned a title shot. Rousey made her amateur MMA debut 19 months ago and had four previous professional fights. She was previously 2-0 in Strikeforce, both by quick submission, winning last August and last November.
Besides finding out whether Rousey's quick rise was due to hype and her looks more than substance, the pre-fight trash talk made headlines and fueled both fighters. They butted heads, literally, during Friday's weigh-ins, but because plenty of cameras were conveniently in place there was some question as to whether it was gamesmanship or whether it was real.
They didn't touch gloves just before the opening bell, and after the fight Tate said, "I really didn't like her." Before the fight, Tate said the MMA world would see Rousey "finally eat some punches" and that Rousey was "way more talk than anything else."
About five minutes after the fight, Tate stood in the cage and watched the replay of her arm being bent in ways an arm simply shouldn't be bent. Rousey stood probably three feet away from her, emotionless, watching the same replay on giant screens in the arena.
"I didn't talk my way into that one," Rousey said.
Despite her lack of experience and coming down 10 pounds from her last fight, Rousey was almost a 4-to-1 favorite on online sportsbooks. Her Twitter following is growing by the minute — it was over 34,000 by the time this fight went off the air — and her star figures to keep getting brighter.
"I'm just very happy to be the champion," Rousey said, "and excited for what's next."
