There is the constant struggle in MMA between what is interesting and what is deserved. You only need to look at this weekend’s victor, Michael Bisping—always an interesting match up for the long time middleweight champion but couldn’t put together the respectable wins to get there. On other occasions men who have done little to earn a title shot will simply be in the right place at the right time when the company needs them—think Carlos Condit’s shot at Robbie Lawler or Alexander Gustafsson’s tangle with Daniel Cormier. Neither man was a clear front-runner for a title shot (Gustafsson was coming off of a brutal knockout loss) and yet both of those title fights were exhilarating affairs with controversial decisions.
That is the situation that we found ourselves in when Holly Holm versus Ronda Rousey was booked. Holm had only bested two sub top ten fighters in what is already an extremely thin division, but the unbeatable Rousey needed new faces and an umpteen time boxing world champion looks great on promos. Meanwhile Miesha Tate was left waiting in the wings, having ground her way through the highly regarded Sara McMann and Jessica Eye, positioning herself as the clear number one contender. When Holly Holm put together the most one-sided and technically superb performance in women’s MMA history to knock Rousey out, we again had to deal with the fact that consistency at the highest levels of the game has very little to do with how an individual fighter matches up stylistically with another individual fighter.
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So with the announcement of Holly Holm versus Miesha Tate (while Rousey’s PR crew mysteriously forbid asking her questions about fighting) you would think we have a match everyone should want to see. Holm knocked off the champ and Tate has proven herself against the best of the rest. Except the assumption is that Tate is going to get beaten up, and probably badly.
I don’t write the kind of articles that discount one fighter because I feel like anyone who is in the UFC is good enough—performing the perfect gameplan—to at least trouble anyone else in their weight class. But this fight is extremely difficult to sell Tate’s chances in. My first thought was that Tate may match up better with Holm than Rousey because Rousey only has one method of getting into the clinch—the bum rush—and couldn’t learn to shoot if she wanted to because her knees are reportedly wrecked from her judo career. Tate wrestled through high school and still shoots in on opponents pretty consistently. As Holm’s entire boxing game is built around that laser left straight and the occasional check hook when her opponent wades in with their head upright and on a line.
The problem is that Tate very rarely sets up her shots with strikes, and her shot is far from the deepest or lowest. A Rashad Evans set up into level change on sight of a return, blasting through into a huge double would be a beautiful thing to see Tate perform against Holm, but boxing into her takedowns just doesn’t seem to be part of Tate’s game.
More worrying is Tate’s tendency—I say tendency, it’s more of a ritual—of running out to the center of the cage at the start of the fight, throwing her right hand, and immediately getting hit square in the face. Against Rousey, this saw her get immediately clinched and thrown to the mat. Can’t really blame her, it is what every single one of Rousey’s opponents spare Holm attempted.
Tate usually takes a blow or two to get into the clinch, just like Rousey used to. The problem Rousey had against Holm was that her lateral movement was so on point that Holm rarely found herself in trouble. She only countered one in every three or four rushes on her, but it kept her safe from falling into unnecessary clinches. As Rousey tired, Holm simply landed her blows and rather than retracting them to her guard she would stiff arm Rousey’s face to prevent the clinch—as is so common in sumo.
One element of Holm’s game, which might return for this bout, is her use of thudding round kicks to the legs. Against Rousey she was reluctant to throw round kicks out in the open, especially after eating a powerful left hook as Rousey stepped inside of one, and instead stuck to low line linear kicks to jam Rousey’s forward movement.
The one instance that Tate showed some impressive thought on the feet was her use of a painfully telegraphed shot at Jessica Eye, to set up a faked level change into right hand which wobbled her.
That fight did devolve somewhat into Eye abandoning her jab and squaring up to trade rights with Tate whenever the two came together. Both ended up taking some big shots and not showing much in the way of defensive craft.
Something which was heavily praised of Holm in the fight with Rousey was her defense in the clinch. We all figured the fight would move to the clinch eventually even if Holm fought perfectly, but Holm surprised us by more than managing there. I recommend reviewing the great Firas Zahabi’s work on this but essentially Holm’s strategy focused on clamping the arm which Rousey almost always prefers to attack to her body, and if necessary leaning on the fence and curling up like a prawn to prevent the harai-goshi, arm drag and assorted upper body follow ups Rousey utilizes from there.
While against Rousey that proved a perfect choice to defuse a greater threat, if Tate can get Holm along the fence she might have far better luck dropping onto Holm’s hips and pulling them away from the cage to put her on her back. Though let us not forget just how large Holm and Rousey have always been at bantamweight, Holm is likely to have some size and strength on Tate come fight time.
Getting the fight to the fence against Holm seems like the best course of action because she is so thoughtful, mobile and cautious that she is unlikely to stand still and throw power punches that Tate can just time a shot underneath. But Tate has shown no aptitude for ring cutting in the past and, as Rousey found out, you are not going to convince Holm to just back onto the fence as so many other ‘top strikers’ in MMA will when under fire.
Tate is very much a momentum fighter and has won her last two fights after stealing just a split second of opportunity. Maybe she’ll grab a hold of the guillotine she used to turn McMann to her back, maybe she’ll catch Holm circling with one of those broad swings. Tate’s top game is tight enough that though she hasn’t stopped anyone since 2012, if she gets on top she can hold it, threaten, and win the round. And of course Tate’s best quality is that ‘scrappiness’. It’s not all about perfect technique and strategy, sometimes the simple act of constantly moving forwards can be disconcerting. Sometimes the act of the underdog still being there by the fourth or fifth round can be disheartening for the betting favorite.
Besides, back when I was tired of hearin, “I can’t see how Ronda could lose” before and after every Rousey fight I wrote that it doesn’t matter who someone is, it matters what they do. Tate may not have shown anything that matches up especially well with the mobile, counter punching champion, but sometimes a fighter can look like a completely different person from one fight to the next.
Finally, let us not forget that we are not talking about a well known and tested commodity in Holly Holm. Her level of competition went from record padding, to the lower level of the UFC’s bantamweight division, straight to Rousey. We haven’t seen her have to repeatedly stuff the shots of the better grapplers. We haven’t actually seen her do all that much. Everything she has shown has been marvelous, but we are not working from a tremendous body of work. We haven’t seen someone throw a ton of low kicks, dirty box her, get on top of her and tire her for a round or two. There’s a lot of room for unpleasant surprises.
For more on Holly Holm keep an eye out for the new episode of Ringcraft. Otherwise, get back here Thursday for our look at the much more anticipated bout between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz.
Pick up Jack’s new kindle book, Finding the Art, or find him at his blog, Fights Gone By.
See more of the Gian Galang’s amazing art on his website.
