Ronda Rousey is so good, so dominant, that it almost doesn’t matter whom she fights. She’s become such a massive figure that people are interested in her fights no matter whom she faces. People watch to see how quickly she’ll win almost as much as they do to see if she’ll win.
Let there, however, be no doubt about this point: The interest in her bouts would be far greater if the opponent is perceived to have a legitimate chance to defeat her.
Rousey, the UFC’s women’s bantamweight champion, has pretty much cleaned out the division. She’s going to fight Miesha Tate later this year or early next year for the third time.
And there is no one in the division other than Tate who’s perceived to be a challenge for her.
That’s why it makes sense for the UFC to add a women’s flyweight division. A 125-pound division makes sense on a lot of levels.
It bridges the gap between the strawweights at 115 and the bantamweights at 135.
That allows women who are finding it difficult to continue to make 115 pounds to jump to the next class at 125. If, for instance, highly regarded strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk, who is showing signs of developing into a star and a popular attraction, begins having difficulty making the weight, she’d have nowhere to go without a flyweight division.
Her option would be to continue to push herself to make 115, which would be potentially unsafe, or to leave the UFC because she couldn’t make 115 and it’s far too big of a jump for her to go to 135.
A jump to 135 would mean going up 17.4 percent in weight, and she’d be vastly smaller than her opponents. Some, but not many, would be able to do it.
But the bigger lure of 125 is that it could potentially develop a new slate of challengers for Rousey.
Consider if a 125-pound champion reels off a few wins and looks good. There will be demand for a champion-vs.-champion bout against Rousey in no time.
There are only so many squash matches one person can take. A fighter who learns and develops at 125 and then physically matures and jumps up a class would be a preferable opponent for a dominant champion, be it Rousey or someone else down the line.
That also begs the question of the 145-pound division, and that’s an entirely different discussion. It would make sense in the here and now, because if the UFC had a women’s featherweight class, it would be far easier to make a Rousey-Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino match.
That is a match that fans are clamoring to see, but Justino has yet to take a run at making the bantamweight division Rousey rules. Until she proves she can make it, and make it safely, there will be no fight between them.
A featherweight class would rectify that issue, but it might create more problems than it solves.
UFC president Dana White’s concern when adding divisions is if there are enough quality fighters to fill it. And at 145, that could be in question.
There are far fewer viable contenders at 145 and above than there are below 145, though that’s not to say there aren’t quality women’s featherweights in the world.
It may be worth a shot to add it, but the situation doesn’t cry out for it as much as it does a 125-pound class.
There shouldn’t be any such issue filling out a flyweight women’s division.
Tate has already said she’d like to try 125 pounds. If she loses to Rousey when next they meet – and though Rousey is a heavy favorite, it’s not a foregone conclusion that she wins – Tate will basically have no future at 135.
But if she dropped to 125, she theoretically would have the ability to become a very strong champion.
And as the UFC puts on more and more shows around the world every year, it won’t hurt to have the extra divisions to put on championship fights in a place that hasn’t had one yet.
White hasn’t warmed up to the idea of a women’s flyweight class, but as he freely admits, it wasn’t all that long ago that he hadn’t warmed up to women in the UFC, period.
Rousey changed that.
And now, it’s time to change again. There are a lot of good women fighters in the world and more deserve a chance to compete in the UFC.
There are far more good reasons to add a women’s flyweight class than not.
Here’s hoping that a 125-pound fighter comes along, and soon, to persuade White to make the move.
