Joe Rogan on Ronda Rousey's Decline

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. In your opinion, what happened to the young girl that was... Rhonda Rousey? Yes, the Olympian girl that, you know, all of a sudden went from the penthouse to the shithouse. A lot of things. It's a long, long story. She was a big follower of her. Amazing judo practitioner, and dominant like no one else ever in women's MMA up to that point, in the UFC at least. But there was some holes in her approach that were exposed by Holly Holm, the one who knocked her out. The one that kicked her, yeah, yeah. The girl that head kicked her. Holly had the perfect style to deal with Rhonda's style. She's really strong, she's fast, she's an amazing athlete, and she is an outstanding striker. And so Rhonda's thing was to charge at you like a fucking bull. And Holly just played the matador brilliantly, caught her, lit her up while she was coming in, and then eventually head kicked her and stopped her. Once you get knocked out like that, first of all, she was very, very confident while she was the champion. And some people would say arrogant. And because of that, there's all these people that are waiting for you to fall. There's a lot of people out there that don't have much confidence. And when they see someone who's out there who's got a lot of confidence, it's very compelling. Like a Floyd Mayweather or like Conor McGregor, their confidence is incredibly compelling. Like you want to be near them. But those people, when that person loses, they're the first ones to attack. They're like, yeah, you fucking loser. I knew you were a loser. Like you go to Rhonda Rousey's Instagram page and read the comments under her pictures. It's ruthless. Some fucking assholes, just assholes. And I guarantee you, all those people are severely unaccomplished or really young. Either young kids who don't understand what they're doing, they just have this opportunity to be able to talk shit. Or they're a bunch of fucking losers, and they're finding this opportunity to shit on someone who was this incredible, bright, shining star that fizzled out. So she lost to Holly Holm, and then she came back in a far worse matchup against Amanda Nunes. And I thought, Nunes, before Holly Holm beat her, I thought Nunes was the most dangerous matchup for her. Because Amanda Nunes is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, and she has heavy, heavy hands. She's a dangerous striker. And I was like, Rhonda's going to have to close the distance to grab her and take her to the ground. And when she does, it's no fucking picnic. Because Amanda Nunes is nasty on the ground. And then getting close to her, she's got knockout power with her hands. I'm like, this is a terrible, terrible matchup. And it turned out to be right, because she got knocked out in 48 seconds in the rematch. But what she should have done is revamp her camp or not fight. Revamp, go to one of the masters, there's a few masters of mixed martial arts in this world. There's Farah Zahabi and Matt Hume and Duke Rufus. There's a few of these striking mixed martial arts masters. And you have to go to them. You have to go to them, and you have to submit yourself and say, look, let's fix this. Let's fix whatever I'm doing. And let's see if we can take this to the next level. Because the sport evolved, and the sport passed her by. Like, she was at the very top. But if you build it, it's like that Field of Dreams movie. You build it, they will come. And when she built the women's bantamweight division and became this dominant force and stopped all these people and looked invincible, all those women were coming up below her. And they were getting better, and they were evolving. And they were like the rest of MMA. They were reaching this incredibly high level. Whereas the women's MMA movement in the early days, you know, three, four years ago, if you watched women's MMA, the skill level was nowhere near commensurate with the men's skill level. Like, the men's skill level three, four years ago, they're better today, but only a little bit better. But the women are way better today than they were, because it's a new thing. It's like 1997 for mixed martial arts for men. That's what like three or four years ago was. But now, the women have essentially pretty much caught up or close to it. There's very high level striking, very high level submissions, very high level fluid overall mixed martial arts games that you're seeing in the women's division. And Ronda, in a lot of ways, as spectacular as she was, had a very limited approach. She didn't kick. She punched, but she wasn't necessarily like the most brutal knockout puncher. And she wasn't necessarily the most skillful boxer. She didn't really have a tremendous amount of experience. What she had was incredible athleticism, a world class mindset. She was a world class athlete. She's a former Olympian and outstanding judo. Her judo and her arm bars are amongst the best in the world. I'm sure it transitions the way she attacks and attacks and attacks and set things up. She's phenomenally talented and really accomplished in judo. But when you want to be a world mixed martial arts champion at the highest level of the game, now you have to be great at everything. There's people like Demetrius Mighty Mouse Johnson, who I think is the best fighter in the world. He's amazing. That guy's great at everything. And that's why he's the best, because you don't know what the fuck he's going to do. You don't know if he's going to kick you or knee you or take you down or strangle you or elbow you. He's just got so many options, and he's coming at you from all different directions, and he never gets tired. He's the total full package. We don't have a Demetrius Mighty Mouse Johnson in women's MMA yet. But it's coming. It's coming. And Ronda's not that. You know, Ronda's more like maybe like a Chuck Liddell or one of the early pioneers of men's MMA. Super talented, really fun to watch, but perhaps limited in their approach. Yeah, I just enjoy. Well, I enjoy Mighty Mouse, now that you mentioned him. He's incredible. He's incredible. You know, and there's so many of them now. I mean, it's just this sport is just exploding. 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