By Lewis Gould
Ronda Rousey, the most dominant mixed martial arts fighter, has gone through pretty much all viable female fighters in her weight class.
So should she take on a man?
“It’s not a reality,” Rousey told ESPN’s Doug Gottlieb on Thursday (viaMMAfighting.com). “They’re not gonna do anything like that. Fights are chaotic. Anything can happen. And there’s no setting in which we should condone a man hitting a woman.”
The 28-year-old fighter with an 11-0 record continued to underline her point:
“I really just don’t think that any athletic commission on Earth would ever condone something like that. Fights are going to go both ways. You’re going to see both people hitting each other. I don’t think we should celebrate a man hitting a woman in any kind of setting.”
Rousey is right. With the emphasis in professional sports on domestic violence prevention following the high-profile case of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, putting a woman in an Octagon-shaped cage with a man who’s been instructed to attempt to knock her out would not be a good look. Even if Rousey came out the winner (and, let’s be honest, she’s got more than a fighting chance), the whole thing would be uncomfortable.
So maybe it is time this debate ended. Rousey’s got movie roles to concentrate on anyway before she takes on her next opponent anyway. There’s no word yet on who that might be, but there’s likely one guarantee — she’ll be a woman.
