Last week the UFC announced the main event for UFC 190, which will headline Ronda Rousey vs. Bethe Correia in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Now to many people this fight seems likely to be a one-sided affair, which it might be, but before everyone gets into a brawl of how ridiculous this fight may seem let’s just look at why this fight actually makes any sense.
First off Ronda Rousey had stated at UFC 184, after her victory over Cat Zingano, that one of her other challenges she would like to face is Bethe Correia due to her undefeated record of nine wins and a possibility of wanting to avenge the losses of two fellow teammates Jessamyn Duke and Shayna Baszler. The pieces start to fall into place real quick on why this fight makes perfect sense, but also worth mentioning is the fact Correia has always wanted to test her abilities out on the most dominate woman’s champion to ever compete in the octagon and after defeating Rousey’s two fellow teammates it is clear to everyone that she wants to take a shot at Rousey next.
Rousey even wants to fight Correia in Brazil in hopes of defeating her in her home country, which now has begun to start a rivalry between the two adding even more hype to the fight as it becomes clear that neither one has respect for each other personally. After all, fans love it when two fighters do not like each other, which will not only get them more pumped about the fight, but it can also cause buy rates to skyrocket like with George St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz and Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier, which both pay per-views brought in at least 800,000 in buy rates.
Then there is the fighting style of both these amazing female athletes with Rousey’s judo, grappling skills and ju-jitsu she boasts a perfect style of combination that has lead her to victory in every single one of her fights, with nine of her fights being stopped by her well-known armbar technique with the other two by her striking, which makes her that much more dangerous as she has two devastating ways to defeat her opponents. To make Rousey even more of a dominating champion, she holds victories over the top four contenders in the women’s bantamweight division in which, two she defeated in less than twenty seconds in the first round.
With Correia, her grappling might not be up to the level of Rousey’s, but her striking and control of the cage is possibly just what she needs to bring Rousey a fight that she is always wanting to have. With her fights Correia always brings an aggressive behavior that has helped her performance inside the octagon to where she brings the fight close to the cage where she will unleash fury making her opponents almost defenseless. Though it might not be as big of a help, but she has managed to go an entire fight a few times in her career, which also might have a little of an advantage over Rousey. In this fight it will be the first time Correia ever fights a five round fight, which is something she has never done before, so adding another ten minutes on to a fight can always have a different impact on a fighter than a regular three round fight.
After every aspect of the fight is looked over it now becomes a little clearer why this fight makes perfect sense and possibly might be one of Rousey’s biggest challenges yet. Though one could be completely wrong about this fight in general, there is still the possibility that Correia is the fighter that could give Rousey the fight she has been looking for and might even be the fighter that no one would ever expect to defeat her.
The only thing to do now is to wait for UFC 190 and see how the fight goes down. For all we know, it could be a total surprise that leaves everyone on their feet in amazement.
UFC 190: Rousey vs. Correia will be held on August 1, 2015 at the HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
