There can be no doubt that Ronda Rousey gave everything she had to MMA.
Before her, UFC President Dana White once famously quipped that women would "never" fight inside the Octagon on his watch. Not only did Rousey single-handedly change White's mind, but she became arguably the biggest star in UFC history while amassing six straight wins as its 135-pound champion from 2013-2015.
Her success made such an impression on ownership that the fight company has since added two more women's weight classes (115 pounds and 145 pounds) with talk of another (125 pounds) potentially on the way soon.
If she never fights again after last Friday's 48-second TKO loss to Amanda Nunes at UFC 207, Rousey's legacy is already secure.
Like any pioneer, she must be judged by whether she left her world better than she found it. By that metric, Rousey is an unqualified success, managing somehow to be first and best while establishing women's MMA as a staple of UFC programming that is here to stay.
Now, however, it's quite possible we've seen the last of her as a fighter. Despite issuing a statement this week that leaves the door open for a return, the Nunes defeat carried an unmistakable note of finality.
Even if she does come back to the cage one day, it will likely be in a reduced capacity, for sporadic one-offs like the one Brock Lesnar had at UFC 200.
But as longtime MMA reporter—and Bleacher Report contributor—Josh Gross wrote for the Guardian this week, there is some room for optimism about what an MMA world without Rousey might look like.
"The landscape has changed in monumental ways since Rousey's emergence," Gross wrote, "making concerns about what might happen once she disappeared less dire."
On the other hand, women's MMA in the UFC took some body shots during 2016.
Rousey's defeat was merely the capper on a year that saw the bantamweight title passed around like a hot potato, efforts to fete Paige VanZant fizzle with a high-profile loss and Cris "Cyborg" Justino get flagged for a potential anti-doping violation.
The fight company's two current female titlists—Nunes and Joanna Jedrzejczyk—are both terrific, but so far their obvious charisma remains largely untapped by the organization.
Fact is, there's never going to be another Rousey. If neither Nunes nor Jedrzejczyk achieves superstar status, the absence of a popular central figure could leave the UFC's next generation of female fighters adrift in uncharted waters.
Will White and his new bosses at WME-IMG—who are, after all, literally Rousey's talent agents—remain committed to pitching women's MMA as the top attraction it deserves to be?
And who might pick up at least some of the slack left in Rousey's wake?
For the time being, Nunes is comfortably ensconced as women's bantamweight champ. She spent 2016 beating the two biggest stars in 135-pound history—first Miesha Tate at UFC 200, then Rousey at UFC 207—and stands poised to bring back the stability that has been lacking since Rousey lost the title to Holly Holm in November 2015.
Assuming she's up to that task, Nunes is as worthy of a push from the UFC PR machine as anyone on its roster. She'll never be the mainstream crossover star Rousey was, but she's an exciting knockout artist with an inspirational personal story who could be a modest draw if the company finds it in its heart to endorse her.
Not to mention, as the first openly gay champion in UFC history, Nunes could appeal to consumers who have felt as though this sport hasn't given them much to cheer for in the past.
But Nunes' next step is obviously far from set. The biggest problem facing her reign in 2017 might be the absence of an obvious foil.
According to the UFC's official rankings, Valentina Shevchenko is the No. 1 contender, but Nunes just defeated her in March 2016. Shevchenko is slated to take on Julianna Pena on January 28, but that bout likely ends up being a title eliminator only if Pena wins.
Not that Pena is the perfect opponent, either.
The 27-year-old Spokane, Washington, native has publicly campaigned for a title shot, but still feels like a UFC rookie after winning season 18 of The Ultimate Fighter. She missed all of 2014 after suffering a knee injury and fought just three times since returning in April 2015, most recently scoring wins over contenders Jessica Eye and Cat Zingano.
Pena surely has star potential, but fast-tracking her into a fight with a proven finisher like Nunes might be the best way to squander it.
And this is where things start to get really murky for the immediate future of women's MMA.
The UFC could have had the perfect next challenger for Nunes in Holm, but recently made the rather inexplicable decision to rush her into a fight for the inaugural women's featherweight title against Germaine de Randamie on February 11 at UFC 208.
That effectively takes Holm out of the bantamweight talent pool, at least until her bout with de Randamie is settled. As the two people in the UFC to knock Rousey out, it makes good sense that Holm and Nunes might meet up, but if Holm is crowned the company's first women's 145-pound champion, then all bets are off.
This, in turn, makes the unveiling of the women's featherweight division seem even more cumbersome and precarious than it did when the UFC announced it on December 14.
That announcement was notable largely because it did not include Justino.
The fight company has had Cyborg—who is a proven, significant ratings draw—under contract since March 2015 but has been forcing her to fight in unorthodox 140-pound catchweight bouts because it did not previously field a division at her natural weight.
Justino went 2-0 in those catchweight fights, is still the reigning Invicta FC featherweight champion and is regarded as the most dominant female MMA fighter in the world. Even though her relationship with the UFC has always been strained, it just flat-out didn't make sense that the organization left her out of its first ever 145-pound title fight in favor of Holm vs. de Randamie.
As Bleacher Report's Jeremy Los noted at the time:
The fight company later claimed Justino had turned down multiple matchups for UFC 208. Cyborg herself retorted she'd merely asked to fight in March instead of February, and that she was still recovering from the hefty weight cut prior to her victory over Lina Lansberg in September 2016.
Either way, the decision to shut Justino out began to look prescient when the UFC announced on December 22 that she'd been flagged for a potential performance-enhancing-drug violation during an out-of-competition test.
The fight company had certainly dodged a bullet not booking her opposite Holm for the new title, though with Cyborg now potentially facing a drug-related suspension, it casts the future of women's featherweight—which should rightly be hers to own—into doubt.
The new weight class hasn't even gotten off the ground yet, and White already sounded noncommittal (borderline pessimistic) while discussing it during a recent media appearance before UFC 207.
"That was never the plan, to do [women's featherweight] either, but now we're in," he said, via MMAJunkie.com. "We'll see how that one [fight] goes. Who knows, maybe one of these two will win the belt and we'll find a contender. I don't know, we'll see how this whole thing plays out."
Despite reports to the contrary, White also told reporters the UFC won't be debuting a women's flyweight division in 2017.
Due to unprecedented turnover in 2016, strawweight champion Jedrzejczyk suddenly finds herself as the UFC's second-longest reigning titlist. She's also among the promotion's most dominant, having proved herself possessing of every quality necessary to make her a star—with the possible exception of fluent English.
Jedrzejczyk is sort of the anti-Rousey. She doesn't look like a movie star and she's not going out of her way to cultivate a cartoonish badass persona. Her appeal is quirkier and so far it's been embraced by hardcore MMA fans but hasn't made much of a dent with the mainstream.
Perhaps one of Jedrzejczyk's troubles is that her fights are not as easily consumable—or palatable for the masses—as Rousey's were. She's not a former Olympian who throws people on their backs and armbars them in 45 seconds. Instead, she whittles her opponents like driftwood using technical, deadly accurate kickboxing skills.
Your can't circulate her fights via Instagram video. She's not going to wind up on the red carpet. It's doubtful a generation of young girls will dress as her for Halloween. But there is certainly some charisma there and at the moment Jedrzejczyk seems like the most likely candidate to carry the torch for women's MMA if Rousey never returns.
If the UFC will let her, that is.
It's no secret the fight company's previous ownership created its first women's division to be Rousey's personal playground. The organization promoted her enthusiastically, but at the expense of nearly everyone else.
Now that she may be gone, the immediate future of WMMA in the Octagon may hinge on whether one of these women—Nunes, Jedrzejczyk, Holm or Justino—can pick up the ball and run with it.
It may also depend on how interested UFC brass remains.
Are White and his cronies merely willing to make it work?
Or do they want the next generation of female stars to make it as big as Rousey?
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com
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