The first true face of women’s MMA might’ve been its last. That was of course Ronda Rousey, who crashed the ol’ boy’s party a dozen years ago by rolling a red carpet straight into the Octagon. She brought sophisticated media outlets up close to the sport that wouldn’t have touched it with tongs before her arrival. When she broke news of her fight with Holly Holm, she did so on Good Morning America.
It was Holm, of course, who ruined it all by knocking out Rousey at UFC 193. And it was Amanda Nunes who made damn sure Rousey would never come back after UFC 207.
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Cut forward nearly nine years to UFC 316 and it feels like we’re still wondering who the next face of women’s MMA will be. This weekend Kayla Harrison challenges Julianna Peña for the women’s bantamweight title, that glam accessory that once-upon-a-time carried so much weight. The two have been arguing over who will become the next face of women’s MMA, which feels like it should be a big deal.
Problem is, they seem to be the only people arguing about it. Fans aren’t. Media isn’t. The broader national media doesn’t even know it’s happening. It’s doubtful that Ring Magazine, the “Bible of Boxing,” will put the winner on its next cover as it did Rousey, or that Clay Travis will insist Harrison, should she win, fight Gervonta Davis in her next bout, as he insisted that Rousey should fight Floyd Mayweather.
Saturday’s fight seems to be a kind of Amanda Nunes sweepstakes more than anything else, which these days is stakes enough. The winner will almost certainly get to fight the consensus women’s GOAT, who has vowed to come back after retiring in 2023. Before that happens, Nunes will get inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in a ceremony that takes place during International Fight Week later this month.
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It’s a win-win for the UFC. Nunes’ only loss in the past decade came against Peña at UFC 269, a defeat she avenged less than a year later. That trilogy seems to be circled in sacred blood on Peña’s bucket list. She has been vying for that chance for a long, long time.
And should Harrison win, you have perhaps one of the most anticipated women’s title fights of the past 10 years, given that both Harrison and Nunes are tanks with an intwined backstory dating to their days training together at ATT. One way or another, there’s a big fight hanging in the balance of UFC 316, even if it has nothing to do with unveiling the next face of women’s MMA.
Maybe the trouble is that we’ve set the bar too high on this concept in the first place. When Rousey came in, she made everything that followed possible. In that way, she began her UFC career as God, which, you have to admit, is a super tough act to follow. Her presence brought it all into being. Nobody can replicate that kind of flex. It helped that she treated whoever the UFC booked her against like crash test dummies, submitting most of them in the opening seconds with savage armbars. She came in and ruled what was traditionally a man’s game from the start. That’s why young girls were crying when they met her wherever she went.
UFC is still searching for its next Ronda Rousey. (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
She was a symbol of something far greater than her actual status — a testament of possibility. The way she left the sport turned people against her, but that initial boom holds on as an impossible standard.
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We’ve seen a lot of great fighters come and go in her stead. There have been moments where, if you were to squint, it looked like we might be looking at the “next” one. Rose Namajunas was designated the next Ronda Rousey as far back as her appearances on “The Ultimate Fighter” in 2014. She’s had her moments. Big moments. So has Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Weili Zhang, Valentina Shevchenko, as well as Holly Holm, Miesha Tate and Nunes herself. They’ve all had great careers, and some of them are still going strong.
Including Nunes. Thing is, as dominant as she’s been, she never wanted to embrace being the face of the sport. She was happy to win titles in two weight classes and to beat the living hell out of people, but not all the rest that comes with it. When she abruptly retired after beating Irene Aldana at UFC 289, it came with a few sad trumpet noises from the peanut gallery, but next to no real fanfare, other than the requisite tributes.
Yet if she can solidify her standing as the women’s GOAT by coming back and beating either Peña or Harrison? She’ll take that. Really, that’s all that matters.
The closest thing to a “superstar” in the making right now in the women’s ranks might be the young Dakota Ditcheva, who’s blowing up everyone she faces in the PFL. She’s the nearest thing to the “R” word we’ve seen in a while, yet it would be unfair to launch her into the sun like that, either.
Which is fine. On Saturday night, Peña’s the champion, and Harrison is the two-time Olympic gold medalist coming to take her belt. Take all comparisons away, and there’s nothing wrong with simply being the best in women’s MMA. From there, the public will see what it wants to.
