Holly Holm certainly has the ability to beat Ronda Rousey on Saturday at UFC 193.
If you’re out hunting around for reasons to believe Holm can unseat the fight company’s most dominant champion, that’s the good news. If Holm manages to keep this fight off the ground, to control the distance and prevent Rousey from utilizing her ferocious submission game, she’s got a chance. Maybe even a good one.
The bad news is, she’ll have to fight a perfect fight to make that strategy work.
For Holm, the margin for error in this bout will be damn-near nonexistent.
The 34-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, native actually stacks up as well physically against Rousey as anybody we’ve seen try their luck thus far. Holm will enjoy height and reach advantages and may be the best pure athlete Rousey has faced during her professional career.
But if the challenger’s best hope is to stick and move, to make Rousey pursue her and slow the champ’s attack through a lengthy accumulation of blows—well, that’s going to be a tall order. And Holm will likely have to do it for five full rounds.
And Rousey? She just needs Holm to make one mistake.
Just ask Cat Zingano about that. Or ask Sara McMann. Or ask Liz Carmouche. All of them appeared to have styles that could make things interesting for Rousey.
In the end, none of them did.
For good measure, ask Miesha Tate.
Tate has spent more time in the cage with Rousey than any other woman—15 minutes, 25 seconds over the course of two fights. In the absence of other perennial contenders, she’s styled herself as Rousey’s arch nemesis and was supposed to be next up for the champ before getting unexpectedly passed over in favor of Holm.
It could just be that disappointment talking, but Tate told Ariel Helwani this week on The MMA Hour that she doesn’t like Holm’s chances against The Rowdy One.
"I just don't think it's a good style match-up,” Tate said, via MMA Fighting’s Shaun Al Shatti. “I really don't. I don't think that she's going to be able to stop Ronda for 25 minutes [from] taking her down and beating her, even if she jabs and moves.”
Oddsmakers seem to agree, making Holm a whopping 12-1 underdog, according to the latest lines at Odds Shark.
So, too, does the media:
If they straight up boxed I'd give Rousey a decent shot of beating Holm. Seriously. MMA? Umm, I'm sorry no chance. https://t.co/FckeYwXyiI
— Josh Gross (@yay_yee) November 10, 2015
Holm says that's fine by her.
“I don’t mind you saying I’m a huge underdog, because I am a huge underdog,” she told Yahoo Sports' Kevin Iole. “But the odds have nothing to do with how I’ll perform. I wouldn’t have taken the fight if I didn’t think I was ready or didn’t believe I could win.”
And look, it isn’t as though Holm lacks the power to stop Rousey on the feet. In fact, she’s finished six fights en route to her current 9-0 professional MMA record. Here she is taking care of Allanna Jones via vicious head kick at Legacy FC 21 in July 2013:
But Holm is also known as a slow starter. None of her stoppages have occurred in the first round. Through a pair of fights in the Octagon, she’s come off a little tentative, nearly letting Raquel Pennington spoil her promotional debut at UFC 184.
Holm eked out victory in that bout by split decision. Her second fight was slightly more impressive—against dangerous grappler Marion Reneau—but she still wound up taking a fairly tepid unanimous decision.
Even before she arrived in the UFC, people had Holm tabbed as a potential test for Rousey. Still, it might have been nice to give her a little more time to get her legs under her on the big stage before she earned this title shot. There is a real danger she has been handed her chance at Rousey and bantamweight gold before she really hits her stride in the UFC.
It seemed premature to boost Holm into this bout when the UFC first announced it for UFC 195 in January 2016. And that was before an injury to welterweight champion Robbie Lawler forced the organization to scramble to find a main event that might draw a respectably large crowd to Melbourne, Australia's massive Etihad Stadium for UFC 193.
Rousey and Holm got the call and their fight was moved up by a month and a half. End result: what already shaped up as a tough assignment for Holm this early in her UFC career got even tougher.
Now, not only has she had to prepare for Rousey on a slightly accelerated timetable, but she’ll also have to handle the spectacle of this event.
Etihad Stadium reportedly will be set up to hold 70,000 people, per Fox Sports. There’s no telling how many will actually show up for UFC 193, but it stands to be a lot. Most of them are expected to be there rabidly in support of Rousey.
As if the champion needs any more help.
Perhaps Rousey’s biggest advantage in any fight is that her skill set makes it so she doesn’t have to be perfect. She can make a few mistakes and still recover. She can let a punch slip through her defenses or get out of position on the ground and still compensate for it with her own athleticism and preternatural grappling.
Contrast that with Holm who—like all Rousey’s other opponents—is likely finished if she even lets the champion get her hands on her, and you begin to see how big a benefit that really is.
Holm must control the distance in this fight without allowing Rousey to get within clinching range. If the champion gets into position and starts chaining together judo takedowns, look out.
Holm brings a wealth of experience with her between her nearly 40 pro boxing matches and a four-year MMA career. She also comes from the vaunted Jackson-Winkeljohn MMA team, so you can bet she’ll be as well prepared as possible.
Still, this all sounds like a lot for anyone to handle.
Holm will have to make her third UFC appearance inside an enormous arena more than 10,000 miles from home. Oh yeah, and she’ll have to do it against the best fighter in the world, knowing she needs to be perfect to have a chance to win.
