This weekend marks the first women’s bantamweight title fight in UFC history that won’t involve Ronda Rousey.
Not that anyone would ever let you forget that.
When Holly Holm makes the first defense of her 135-pound crown against Miesha Tate on Saturday at UFC 196, the two will still be fighting in Rousey’s long shadow.
No matter who wins, they’re not likely to fight their way out of it anytime soon, either.
In the immediate wake of Holm’s victory over Rousey at UFC 193 last November, it seemed as though Rousey’s strange celebrity might not survive. She became the target of a thousand mean-spirited Internet memes after suffering that ugly knockout loss. It appeared possible the mainstream’s fascination with her might go up in flames along with her status as the baddest woman on the planet.
If the last four months have taught us anything, however, it’s that those initial fears of Rousey’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
It turns out Ellen Degeneres still wants to have the former champ on her afternoon talk show. Sports Illustrated still wants to put her on the cover of its swimsuit issue. Hollywood power-player Jerry Bruckheimer told TMZ that her movie career is alive and well.
Even in defeat Rousey remains the biggest star in women’s MMA—despite reports that her PR team instructed an Australian news program not to ask her about it (h/t Bloody Elbow, Warning: NSFW content in video).
That’s the reality, and it seems like an injustice to Holm. The 34-year-old former boxing champion was well within her rights this week when she told Yahoo Sports’ Dave Doyle she won’t let her career be defined by somebody she’s already beaten.
“Trust me, the last fight was one of the best moments of my life,” Holm said. “But I don’t want to be defined by one fight. I don’t want that to be the whole focus of my life.”
Holm has taken the reins of the bantamweight division with admirable grace and astonishing ease. She’s been affable, charismatic and has so far been up to every challenge of being champion. In fact, it’s probably not too big a stretch to say many hardcore fans prefer her to Rousey at this point.
But she’s no Ronda. At least not as far as the mainstream media is concerned.
Following her shocking KO victory over the previously undefeated promotional juggernaut, Holm made a bevy of television appearances the UFC probably originally booked for Rousey. Again, she came up aces, handling it all with supreme class.
When they were over, however, the media largely let Holm go back to her life in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There, she’s been able to train for Tate in relative anonymity and would probably tell you she wouldn’t want it any other way.
The downside to that, perhaps, is that the most compelling storylines headed into this fight against Tate have little to do with the people actually fighting. The big-picture view is still Rousey-centric.
Everybody wants to know if and when Her Rowdiness will return.
Everybody wants to know if she’ll rematch Holm in her first fight back.
And mostly, it just feels like people are hoping Tate doesn’t screw that up.
Initially, conventional wisdom said the UFC would keep Holm on the sideline until Rousey was ready to make her comeback. It was thought their big-money rematch would be too important to risk. Once it became clear Rousey would be out longer than expected, however, that plan was scrapped.
To Holm’s credit, she never shied away from taking other matchups. Quite the contrary. After her victory over Rousey, her manager, Lenny Fresquez told the L.A. Times' Lance Pugmire (h/t Washington Post's Des Bieler) that she would rather stay active than sit on the sideline and wait for the former champ to make up her mind.
Holm’s camp even reportedly floated the idea of fighting Cris “Cyborg” Justino at a catchweight—something the UFC and Rousey always refused to do. In accepting Tate, she also took on a fight with the consensus No. 1 contender, a challenger with a four-fight win streak dating back to Tate’s last meeting with Rousey in December 2013.
At least some people believe she may turn out to be a tougher fight for the new champ than Rousey was:
Holm vs Tate might be more interesting that folks expect. Certainly seems like a better match up than Rousey.
— Jack Slack (@JackSlackMMA) February 29, 2016
It’s hard to find fault with anything Holm has done so far. She even keenly understands her place in MMA history right now and that there is still at least some scrutiny on her.
“I don’t want to be a one-hit wonder,” she told Doyle. “I don’t want it to be one performance. I want to show I’m here for a reason. For me, I want to keep going, keep getting better.”
But let’s not kid ourselves. Everybody—besides Tate, of course—is hoping this fight turns out to be a mere bump in the road toward getting Holm back in a cage with Rousey.
Rousey’s standup looked so bad in their first fight, her knockout loss was so shocking that it undid much of the mythologizing the UFC had done around her during her nearly three years as champion. Afterward, more than a few people were willing to dismiss her as a fraud, a creation of the UFC hype machine.
There’s no way to find out where the truth lies (or how good Holm might really be) until Rousey returns. The former champ has talked openly about her desire for a rematch, and you better believe she doesn’t want anybody—especially not her arch nemesis, Tate—to steal Holm’s thunder before she gets back.
“I need her to win,” Rousey told TMZ Sports this week, via USA Today’s Josh Peter. “I want to be the one to beat [Holm], so I don’t want anyone else to take the honor of beating her.”
Tate, naturally, is out to spoil any and all of these plans.
“I’m confident that I’m going to win the belt,” she told Peter. “So they’re definitely going to have to adjust the game plan. I would like to see Holly and Ronda fight again, but it just may not be for the belt.”
In a way, the lesson of Holm vs. Tate may be that, despite the recent shakeup, the story of the UFC women’s bantamweight division remains the same. Fight company brass started the weight class as a showcase for one woman, and so long as there is a glimmer of hope she might return, it will continue to be that way.
It’s the only thing seemingly everyone can agree on.
All roads still lead back to Ronda.
