If you didn’t know anything about MMA and you heard about a ferocious women’s champion, whom would you imagine?
If you heard about a savage no one could beat, who had built a legacy in a couple of years on the broken noses and battered faces of those silly enough to oppose her, whom would you envision?
For many, Ronda Rousey is the boilerplate of female ferocity, given her ascension to the UFC first and the push she received when she arrived. She kicked the door down for women in back in 2012. Rousey held her title over three years and five defenses, showing up in movies and magazines along the way.
She was a dynamo, a live wire in a sport that desperately needed one. Rousey backed it up in the cage—the only place that matters. A place where no amount of red carpets or Ellen appearances will save your life if you show up unprepared.
Until she wasn’t.
Last November, Rousey arrived in Australia to defend her title against Holly Holm. It was a bout most felt would amount to a brief aside on her press tour of world dominance. Needless to say, when Holm wailed on her for six minutes and then finished her with a head kick, there was some surprise.
Since then, Rousey has been a ghost. An afterthought. A specter lingering on the fringes of the bantamweight division she once ruled so dominantly. Rousey has remained relevant only because Dana White insisted she’d be back and media have to ask about something in the 135-pound weight class.
She’ll return now at UFC 207 for a chance to reclaim her title. But the long layoff and smoke and mirrors surrounding it may have revealed her to be more style than substance. Somewhere along the way—amid the badly outclassed opponents, quick stoppage wins and ascension to global stardom—she became more brand than baddest woman on the planet.
And while that was happening, a women’s champion of true substance was emerging. The one you’d imagine.
Twenty pounds south of Rousey, Joanna Jedrzejczyk has been plying her trade to the tune of a strawweight belt and a 12-0 record. She’s built that record on the crispest hands in the sport, a high pace and a ruthlessness that almost no one in MMA can match.
She inflicts beautiful, technical pain on those who dare try and take her title from her. She blisters them with combinations and footwork that they’ve never seen and likely hope never to see again.
She’s hard to take down and almost impossible to hold down if you get her there.
She’s a tireless worker who left everything she knew and loved in Poland to move to America and chase excellence.
She’s openly, obsessively focused not with keeping her title but with being the greatest mixed martial artist to ever strap on gloves.
At UFC 205, Jedrzejczyk will look to defend her title for a fourth time overall as she faces fellow Pole Karolina Kowalkiewicz. The matchup serves as part of an unprecedented triple main event for the promotion’s first trip to New York City.
She’s been predictably focused and is now nipping on the heels of Rousey’s record for title defenses in a ladies’ weight class. That's something she could easily match by early 2017 if she’s successful in the Big Apple.
It’s an interesting dichotomy—these two phenomenal women and their successes in a sport that was as much about testosterone as anything else for much of its infancy. Rousey was and probably still is the biggest female name in the game. But Jedrzejczyk may finally hit the mainstream herself with a good showing in the world’s biggest media market.
The two have had their legacies intertwine to some extent. They are the first two women to garner attention in the UFC and start blazing trails. They’ve largely gotten where they are through different avenues though, showing that there’s more than one way to take over a sport.
That may be further supported by the fact that Jedrzejczyk, for as different as she is from Rousey, served as her co-main event on the night Rousey lost to Holm. Jedrzejczyk has repeatedly spoken of her with considerable reverie.
But make no mistake, it’s Jedrzejczyk who’s the fighter’s fighter at this point, the champion anyone in MMA—male or female—should look up to. Rousey is on her way out of the game to have children and make movies, probably regardless of how her title fight goes down next month.
While she’s doing that, Jedrzejczyk will be breaking her records and cementing her own legacy—and she’ll be doing it solely in the cage.
No movies, no magazines, no Ellen.
That’s substance.
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