Ronda Rousey is the UFC's Mike Tyson, but that's not necessarily a good thing
UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey seems to make the impossible seem possible every time she steps foot in the Octagon.
When Rousey knocked out Alexis Davis in 16 seconds in 2014, it appeared she finally set the bar for championship fights. That was until Saturday night when Rousey took undefeated, No. 1 contender Cat Zingano to the ground and forced her to tap out in just 14 seconds.
Fourteen seconds.
She now holds the record for the fastest finish in a UFC championship fight, surpassing Andrei Arlovski knocking out Paul Buentello in just 15 seconds at UFC 55 in 2005.
Rousey isn't just winning. She's decimating fighters who are touted as legitimate challengers, and that's where the problem begins with the most dominant woman in all of combat sports.
It's clear that the other female UFC fighters at 135 pounds aren't on Rousey's level. Rousey has faced and defeated the top five fighters in the women's bantamweight division: Zingano, Miesha Tate (twice), Alexis Davis, Sara McMann and Sarah Kaufman.
If you discount Rousey's rematch with Tate, which lasted 58 seconds into the third round, she's annihilated the other four fighters in a combined two minutes and 30 seconds.
Her latest win had Rousey drawing comparisons with former boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who at his peak routinely snuffed opponents in a matter of seconds, with some of the most devastating and mind-altering power the sport had seen.
"She is without a doubt that female version of (Mike Tyson)," UFC president Dana White said at the UFC 184 post-fight press conference. "I told her. There's very few situations where a fight goes 14 seconds and the crowd is cheering and going crazy and they're looking at each other with their mouths open and everybody knows how awesome Ronda is, but everybody was looking at each other with their mouths open because she was fighting Cat Zingano. This was going to be a tough-ass fight."
White undoubtedly meant the comparison between Rousey and Tyson as a compliment, and in many ways it's exactly that, but there's another side of the coin.
Tyson's tear through the heavyweight division, as impressive as it was, never will be compared to the all-time greats, if for no other reason than the fact that during his peak years in the late 1980s, the level of competition just wasn't up to par. Tyson tore through fighters like a butcher knife through tissue paper, but he never faced fighters on his level until years later. As it turns out, those were the fights Tyson struggled with the most, in two losses to Evander Holyfield and another to Lennox Lewis, both of whom routinely land higher in the discussion of best boxers of all time.
As author Richard Hoffer said about Tyson's legacy in 2014, "for entertainment value Tyson's your man; that was a lot of bang for your buck. But I don't think we'll remember him as one of the 10 best heavyweights of all time."
In Rousey's case, it's certainly not her fault that the rest of the division hasn't caught up to her, but she also has to understand that when she makes it look this easy to dispatch a 9-0 competitor like Zingano, who was being called the last hope in terms of legitimate challengers, it's hard not to believe she's facing sub-par opposition.
Unless Cris "Cyborg" Justino joins UFC and somehow can make 135 pounds and look as dangerous as she does at featherweight, Rousey virtually has cleared out her entire division with very few viable challengers on the horizon.
Sure, Bethe Correia has an interesting story with Rousey, considering she beat two of the champion's roommates and close friends, but the problem is those wins came over Shayna Baszler and Jessamyn Duke, who have a combined UFC record of 1-3.
Ohio native Jessica Eye probably has a better argument for a title shot, but she's only 1-1 in her past two fights and it's going to be a hard sell that she would be a real threat to Rousey's title reign.
The most logical choice would be for Eye and Correia to square off and the winner earn a shot at Rousey, possibly in a year-end show to close out 2015.
Rousey is expected to take some time off to film a movie and then when she's finished, White will sit down and discuss her next move. Hopefully by then a real contender has risen from the ranks and somebody will enter the fight with Rousey as less than a 10-to-1 underdog.
Rousey is the best in the world in the women's division, puts on an incredible display every time she steps into the Octagon, and it's always must-see television.
But if Rousey hopes to be remembered as one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, she'd better hope the competition starts giving better than a 14-second fight, or she will go down in history as the female Mike Tyson — and that's almost a backhanded compliment when you really think about it.
