UFC
Ronda Rousey feels last two TKO wins made possible by her establishing the armbar in past wins
Aug 25, 2014 - 1:55:17 PM Ronda Rousey feels last two TKO wins made possible by her establishing the armbar in past wins

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

For the first eight fights of her MMA career, UFC Women's Champion Ronda Rousey pulled off an armbar against each opponent. In her last two in 2014, though, Rousey's striking came into play, as she stopped Sara McMann with a body shot and knocked out Alexis Davis with a quick flurry.

Those striking victories have come because of the simple threat of her armbar, Rousey believes, and she said this weekend that her early establishment of that hold allowed her to open things up in those two most recent fights.

"I've always wanted to be a complete Mixed Martial Artist, and the armbars were from my time in Judo. What I first set out to do is to showcase how good Judo is in MMA," Rousey explained in an interview with Anton Tabuena at BloodyElbow.com). "I've always felt that it has been greatly disrespected before, but I was amazed at how many times I've heard 'judo' even at the press conference (in Macau) tonight."

"It's completely changed, how people perceive that art. I really feel a lot of progress have been made and that thing is done. People know that Judo is a sport that needs to be respected, so that mission was accomplished. After that, I was thinking of how I can make it more entertaining for the fans."

"I just want more things that I can threaten my opponent with because that will open armbars more," Rousey continued. "Even when I was doing Judo, I was known as the armbar girl for a while, and because people were so scared to get armbarred, it made it really easy for me to pin people, and I was pinning people more often. Now, it's gotten to a point where a lot of people are so scared to clinch with me and get taken down and end up on the ground, and it opens up all these striking."

"The reason why I was able to TKO Sara McMann was because she was so preoccupied with not being thrown, and keeping those underhooks, so she didn't even think about getting hit in the body at all. Same thing with Alexis. She was so concerned with not letting me get close enough to grab her, that she wasn't really thinking about a real strike coming her way."

With some new strategy comes some new risks, though, and in the win over Davis, Rousey suffered a nasty gash on her hand that required stitches. As her mom would tell her, she could have avoided that if she'd only have gone for the armbar off the bat.

"But that said, I walked out of the Octagon on my last fight with a huge gash at my hand, and my mom, she just looks at me and says, 'you should've armbarred her, and you wouldn't have gotten hurt yourself.' So I was like 'thanks mom!'"

Penick's Analysis: That's the scary thing with Rousey here. By already having an established weapon that's been near impossible to avoid, she gave herself other options when fighters tried to concentrate on stopping that hold. The fact that she's proving adept at stopping fighters in other ways as well should make any fighter in this division wary of what she'll pull off next time if they get in the cage with her. Rousey's Judo game is simply something everyone's going to have to find a way to avoid as is, and now they have to figure out how not to get beat by one of the other weapons she's showing off.