Why Holly Holm bypassed immediate big payday of a Ronda Rousey rematch
LAS VEGAS – Holly Holm may not have made the wisest business decision to forego an immediate rematch with Ronda Rousey. An immediate rematch would have guaranteed the UFC women's bantamweight champion immense riches.
There literally is no bigger fight that can be made in mixed martial arts right now than Rousey-Holm II.
Rousey, though, won't be ready to fight at UFC 200 in July given her movie schedule, which prompted Holm to ask for a bout in the meantime. But if the fight had been made, it would have headlined the planned mega-card at UFC 200.
Given the major bouts that will appear on the show at the new T-Mobile Arena, that's saying something. A UFC 200 show headlined by Rousey-Holm II had a chance to do two million on pay-per-view.
Holm knew that. She got a firsthand idea of the size of Rousey's star when they met at UFC 193 on Nov. 14 in Melbourne, Australia. The fight was the second-biggest in UFC history from a revenue and pay-per-view sales standpoint.
But Holm wants to be a fighting champion, and she didn't want to wait until July, let alone September or November or whenever Rousey's hectic schedule would permit her to compete again.
And so, much against the wishes of the UFC brass, she pushed for, and got, a fight with Miesha Tate that will be the co-main event of UFC 197 on March 5 at the MGM Grand.
Rousey and Tate fought twice, with Rousey dominating both and winning each by submission. Holm dominated Rousey and won their bout by knockout early in the second round.
But styles make fights and just because A defeated B and C defeated A doesn't necessarily mean that C beats B. We've seen it in combat sports far too often, and nowhere else was it clearer than in the heavyweight rivalry between Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman.
Frazier won the first of three fights with Ali, all of which were brutal, closely contested affairs. Foreman twice manhandled Frazier, including a vicious second-round knockout in which he not only knocked Frazier down six times but once actually lifted Frazier off the canvas with a punch.
But when Ali fought Foreman in the famous "Rumble in the Jungle," fight in 1974, he outsmarted and outboxed Foreman and stopped him in the eighth.
All that is to say that though Holm deserves to be the favorite, Tate very well could win this fight.
And though Holm undoubtedly knows that, she took the match anyway. So, while it could wind up costing her lots of money, Holm opted to compete anyway.
Give it up for her fighting spirit.
"I was open to a rematch with Ronda," Holm said. "I just wanted whatever opportunity was going to come. I think this is definitely even more of a challenging way to go. There's a lot of pressure behind it. I think there's a lot of anticipation what I'm going to do after the last fight. There's a lot of high expectations, and who wants to be a one-hit wonder?"
So far, in the UFC at least, that's what Holm is. She looked less than dynamic in her debut at UFC 184 in Los Angeles on Feb. 28 underneath Rousey-Cat Zingano. Holm won a split decision against Raquel Pennington and was hardly a dynamo.
She clearly defeated Marion Reneau in San Diego on July 15, but again, it wasn't so impressive that fans were demanding her to fight Rousey. When the fight unexpectedly was made instead of Rousey-Tate III, Holm opened as a 20-1 underdog in some sports books.
Holm, though, aided by a terrific game plan devised by coaches Mike Winkeljohn and Greg Jackson, dominated Rousey from start to finish.
It was such a big and unexpected win that it even caught sports books off guard. UFC president Dana White said at a news conference Wednesday at the MGM Grand that a sports book he wouldn't name didn't have the cash on hand to pay out all of the parlay bets it took pairing Holm with a college football game.
"Holly Holm's upset was so big, and this is unheard of, but here in town, there was college football going on that week," White said. "People had bet parlays with Holly Holm and college football. One of the major casinos here didn't have enough money to pay. People had to wait an hour-and-a-half to get paid, which is unheard of here in town."
Indeed it is. Bettors can cash winning tickets, no matter how large, and be immediately paid out in 99.99 percent of cases.
But the size of the upset also indicates how big the rematch would be. Rousey's reputation was so massive, and remains so, that fans now want to see if she can come back and reclaim her place.
If Holm had decided to wait, no one could have blamed her because of the money she risked. And Tate, who has the kind of style that could beat Holm, understood that.
It's why Tate respects Holm so much. But have no doubt, she'll go hard after the belt and believes she can do it.
Holm got the title shot at UFC 193 after it was promised to Tate because White started thinking fans weren't quite ready for Rousey-Tate III. Though Tate had done everything she had to do and White had been very public in saying that if she beat Jessica Eye, she'd get a title shot against Rousey, she wound up not in the fight she'd worked so hard to get.
Not getting that angered her and she briefly considered leaving the sport. But she chose to keep on and now she figures to be as dangerous as ever because she is aware of how fickle such things are. She knows she has to take advantage of this shot, because nothing in the future is guaranteed, even when the president of the UFC promises you.
"I don't take a title opportunity lightly," Tate said. "I put my whole life into this sport right here. I put everything in I have to give, and when I think I'm going to get a title shot, I'm like a hungry beast and it's like you took that steak away from me and I'm pretty pissed.
"It was a whirlwind of emotions, but now here we are and everything worked out the way it was meant to work out. Fate does have a way of finding itself and this is where I was supposed to be."
And it's where Holm deserves to be.
Rousey became popular because she was so dominant. She fought the best the UFC had to offer and repeatedly ended fights in seconds. She stopped an Olympic silver medal-winning wrestler in little more than a minute. She needed only 14 seconds to arm bar an unbeaten Zingano. It took a half-minute to knock out an unbeaten striker.
After knocking out Rousey, Holm is coming right back and not allowing the momentum to slip away. She knows how difficult a fight with Tate will be.
However, a week after her win over Rousey, she attended a boxing match at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus between Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez. When she was shown on the screen between fights, she received a raucous ovation from the crowd.
She should get an even bigger one when she hits the cage next time, given she's willingly seeking a tough bout at great risk to her bank account.
"Styles make fights and every fight is different," Holm said. "It's a different game plan, and we're just going to really zero in on this game plan. She reaches for a lot of things in scrambles and different scenarios. She's headstrong throughout an entire fight.
"She's been through more battles and so she's got that kind of experience in fights where she's digging deep and coming out on top. To me, that's more of a threat in a fight."
But here she is, on what will be one of the big cards of the year. With a lightweight title fight between champ Rafael dos Anjos and Conor McGregor atop the card, this fight will sell big, too.
If Holm comes through, the Rousey rematch will be there and she'll probably need extra accountants to count the money she'll make.
Fighters have short careers and very small windows to maximize their earnings. Holm is risking it all to do what she loves: fight.
No one could ever complain about that.
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