Ronda Rousey thinks she’d beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a no rules fight

By Boxing News - 08/12/2015 - Comments

rousey4By Allan Fox: UFC female bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey added Floyd Mayweather Jr’s name to the list of fighters she thinks she’d beat if the two of them were to mix it up in a no rules type fight. By saying no rules, Rousey is basically saying it would be a fight where anything goes. That obviously wouldn’t be an MMA fight because they do have rules, a lot of them. In other words, Rousey seems to think she would beat Mayweather in a street fight.

Let’s be clear on this; Mayweather has shown no interest at all in wanting to fight Rousey, and I don’t think she’s really interested either. She’s just talking in terms of hypothetical fights. He doesn’t believe in a man hitting a woman, saying via the washingtonpost.com “there’s no setting in which we should condone a man hitting a woman.”

By mentioning Mayweather’s name, Rousey is getting a lot of attention on her career despite the fact that she’s not yet established herself as the best female MMA fighter. Many fans of the sport feel that Cris “Cyborg” Justino is the best female MMA fighter. The two haven’t fought for some reason. Justino fights at 145, and Rousey wants her to come down to 135 to fight at her weight rather than the two of them meet at a catch-weight or Rousey coming up in weight.

Here’s what Rousey said on Reddit.com about Mayweather:

“Do I think I would legit beat Mayweather in a ruleless fight? Floyd is one of the best boxers of all time. He would definitely beat me in a boxing match. I unfortunately don’t get into “matches”. I fight for a living. In a no rules fight, I believe I can beat anyone [her use of bold] on this planet. Boxing is a sweet science with strict rules that I respect very much and aspire every day to improve at. But you said ruleless fight, and that’s my honest answer.”

Mayweather fights for a living to. I’m not sure what Rousey meant by saying she fights for a living in dismissing boxing matches. She might have been better off saying ‘I grapple for a living,’ because that’s closer to reality. She does a lot of wrestling and submission holds in her fights. She doesn’t usually beat her over-matched opponents in the standup position.
I don’t think it would be possible for Rousey to defeat Mayweather even in a ‘no rules’ fight because Rousey would have to get near enough to Mayweather to try and wrestle with him and flip him, which is her favorite move.

Rousey has a Judo background, so she frequently grabs her opponents and flips them on the mat and then jumps on them to either start pounding or to put them into a submission hold. When Rousey does approach one of her opponents, she comes straight at them in a line without them throwing anything of note. It’s pretty basic stuff from Rousey. I’m afraid that approach wouldn’t work for Rousey against Mayweather because he would nail her with a right hand or a jab before she even got near enough to try and flip him to the canvas. But even if she did grab Mayweather, I don’t think Rousey would have the strength to flip.

I come from a wrestling background myself, and it’s not easy to flip the stronger wrestlers. You can try and flip them, but it doesn’t work out most of the time. It’s a very basic move that you don’t see at the upper levels of grappling. The fact that Rousey gets away with it and uses it as her favorite move to get her opponents on the mat tells you the level of opposition she’s been facing. You don’t flip good fighters. That move only works for inexperienced fighters that don’t know how to nullify it. With that said, Rousey would have a hard time getting near enough to Mayweather to even try and flip him. But if she did grab him, I don’t think she would be able to carry out a flip.

Rousey’s not strong enough and I think it would lead to Mayweather throwing her down on the mat and then either jumping on her to finish her off or backing off to wait for her to get back to her feet again before he starts nailing her with rights and left hands. It would be a mismatch in my view. I think Maywesther would just clown Rousey before knocking her out in the first minute or two of the 1st round.



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