After brutal, brilliant domination, Ronda Rousey's list of credible contenders shrinks to one

I’m beginning to suspect that the reason UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey speed-walks to the cage is just so we can’t say that her walkouts last longer than her fights.

It’s either that, or she doesn’t know how to do anything at less than breakneck pace – a hypothesis supported by both her general rise to stardom and her swift destruction of Bethe Correia at UFC 190 in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday night.

This one lasted all of 34 seconds. Add it to the three title defenses that preceded it, and you have four Rousey victories in a grand total of 130 seconds. Most of us couldn’t throw together a halfway decent sandwich in 130 seconds. Yet in that same span, Rousey has defended her women’s bantamweight belt twice as often as anyone has ever defended the UFC heavyweight belt.

Regardless of how you want to look at it – and there are a couple different ways – that’s domination. The only nit you can pick, if you are so inclined, is to question who, exactly, she’s dominating.

Ronda Rousey and Bethe Correia

Against Correia (9-1 MMA, 3-1 UFC), Rousey (12-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) faced an opponent who never had anything resembling a good chance of beating her (watch the Rousey vs. Correia video highlights). She was aggressive, sure. She hit hard, or so we were told. (Side note: Shouldn’t you have to knock out at least one person with a single punch before we start throwing around the phrase “one-punch power,” or do words just not mean anything?) She made scary faces.

Still, Correia was a sacrificial lamb from the start, and anyone with a hint of sense knew it. She wasn’t there because she represented a real challenge to Rousey. She was there because there was no one else left, and also because she’d managed to make things just personal enough to make them interesting.

We knew Rousey was going to win. The only thing we didn’t know for sure was how and when.

To her credit, Rousey managed to keep us guessing on the latter and surprise us with the former. She publicly toyed with the idea of publicly toying with Correia, as punishment for her sins. Then, instead of pulling off her signature submission on a woman who, based on what we’d seen of her ground game, seemed like armbar bait if there ever was any, Rousey opted instead to settle the matter with her fists.

That meant giving Correia more of a chance than she needed to, really. Rousey could have easily trapped her against the fence, thrown her down, and then set about the work of separating tendon from bone. Instead she waded into a firefight, which was probably the kind of fight Correia hoped for – right up until she got it.

Then it was Rousey blitzing and Correia retreating. It was Correia tumbling and Rousey pursuing. Finally it was Rousey landing a left hook and a knee to the body, which had the cumulative effect of convincing Correia to turn and seek her fortune elsewhere, at which point Rousey landed the clean right hand that put her facedown on the floor.

Ronda Rousey

This was a satisfying conclusion, in its own way, and that wasn’t easy to pull off here. For one thing, Rousey was such an enormous favorite that anything other than a flawless victory might have seemed like a letdown. For another, UFC 190 itself was at times a long slog through the land of the “TUF: Brazil” finalists, as if Zuffa executives wanted to make us choke down our vegetables before rewarding us with dessert.

But even if Rousey’s many adolescent fans might have needed a main-card nap just to make it to the main event, it felt worth it by the time we got there. Rousey is clearly such a peerless athlete, her fights all feel like special events. That’s true even if her opponents seem mostly like victims.

It’s hard not to wonder how long she can possibly keep doing all that work by herself, though. Especially with the UFC charging fans 60 bucks and several hours just to see something that fits nicely within the confines of a Vine video, you get the sense that the one-woman show can only go so far.

Here’s where we circle back around to what we might as well call “The Cyborg Question.” As in, Cristiane Justino. As in, the Invicta 145-pound champ who may or may not be able to starve herself down to Rousey’s weight class, but remains the only opponent worth talking about even if she can’t.

On one hand, it’s hard to get too upset at Rousey if she says she’d rather not leave the weight class she dominates just to face a convicted steroid cheat in a division that doesn’t exist within the UFC. On the other hand, how far down the rankings is she willing to reach to find fresh opponents?

The UFC had Correia at the No. 5 spot coming into this fight. Rousey had already beaten the other four, and she’s poised to have another go at top contender Miesha Tate next. Even assuming that Holly Holm’s development continues at its current steady, though by no means accelerated pace, pretty soon we’re going to be all out of female bantamweights who haven’t already had their chance on the Rousey Wheel-O-Pain.

Eventually, Rousey vs. Justino is going to be the only fight with the bare minimum of mystery required to gain the attention of the paying masses. Missing the opportunity to make such a fight would not only cheat the fans, it would also cheat Rousey.

Because how many times can we listen to UFC commentators hyperbolize over how special, how historical, how monumental she is, if we aren’t willing to do what it takes to really find out? How many times can you watch the world’s greatest female fighter show off against mere mortals before it starts feeling less like a show, and more like an execution?

For complete coverage of UFC 190, check out the UFC Events section of the site.