Ronda Rousey to fight Holly Holm
at January's UFC 195
UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey announced on Good Morning America via satellite that she will defend her title against Holly Holm at UFC 195 on January 2nd. The fight will main event a show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, NV.
Rousey was expected to fight her rival Miesha Tate for a third time after Rousey killed Bethe Correia in August and Tate won her fourth straight in July. Instead, she'll fight the undefeated Holm who is 2-0 in the Octagon. When Holm was finally signed to the UFC after a long negotiation period, it was expected that the heavily experienced boxer-turned-MMA-fighter would be groomed to face Rousey at some point. But anybody with two eyes could clearly see that she was anything but impressive in her two fights. In fact the former boxing champion was boring as hell. Nothing about those fights were reasons for her to be given a title fight vs Rousey. To me this is almost as bad as Floyd Mayweather choosing Berto as his next opponent. Nobody wants to see this fight, but Tate is the only person that has been able to push Rousey to the limit. In an interview with the L.A. Times, UFC president Dana White said that while Tate was the initial thought, they were sitting around and determined that people had already seen that fight already.
“A third fight in a rivalry usually comes after the stuff we’d see in [Arturo] Gatti-[Micky] Ward,” White said of the classic boxing trilogy. “With Miesha, the result has been the same twice. Everyone’s already seen that fight.” Tate has broken her silence on the matter, speaking to MMAFighting.com on Friday afternoon. "I am extremely disappointed how all the events unfolded this morning regarding news that I will not be fighting Ronda Rousey," According to Tate, she had already begun training for the Rousey trilogy fight she thought was coming her way. "I was told after my last win that I had earned the title shot," Tate said. "I've already begun training for Rousey and I was shocked to hear the announcement this morning. I regret this for not only myself, but my team, sponsors and the fans who like me believed my next fight was for the title." There is now the thought that Tate will fight Amanda Nunes on that show with the winner facing Rousey if she can get past Holm. If that rounded out the top three fights on that card, that would be an excellent main card already. The January show will come less than a month after the monolith of UFC 194 that features a featherweight title unification bout between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo, and an excellent middleweight title fight between champion Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold. |
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