Liz Carmouche is making her footprint on the Bellator record books after recording another title defense at Bellator 294.
The first half of Bellator’s doubleheader in Hawaii went down Friday with Bellator 294, which took place at Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu and saw a champion defend her title in the main event.
[autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag] (19-7 MMA, 6-0 BMMA) recorded a second consecutive defense of her women’s flyweight title when she rallied from a 3-0 deficit on the scorecards to submit [autotag]DeAnna Bennett[/autotag] (13-8-1 MMA, 3-2 BMMA) with an arm-triangle choke in the fourth frame of their rematch.
For more on the numbers behind Carmouche’s win, as well as the rest of the card, check below for MMA Junkie’s post-event facts form Bellator 294.
Check out these photos from the main event of Bellator 294, a women’s flyweight title bout between Liz Carmouche and DeAnna Bennett.
Check out these photos from[autotag] Liz Carmouche[/autotag]’s win against DeAnna Bennett at Bellator 294 in Honolulu. (Photos courtesy of Lucas Noonan, Bellator MMA)
Liz Carmouche was the only fighter in the Bellator 294 main event who could walk away with gold – and she did.
[autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag] took a risk Friday but it paid off.
In the Bellator 294 main event at Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Carmouche (19-7 MMA, 6-0 BMMA) defeated [autotag]DeAnna Bennett[/autotag] (13-8-1 MMA, 3-2 BMMA) with an arm-triangle choke submission at 4:29 of Round 4.
Due to a weight miss by Bennett at Thursday’s official weigh-ins, the women’s flyweight contest was a one-way title bout, meaning a new champion could not be crowned. However, Carmouche elected to still put her title on the line. If Carmouche won, she retained her title; if Bennett won, the belt would be vacated.
Early, Carmouche served as her own worst enemy when an errant spinning wheel kick backfired. Carmouche spun off-balance as Bennett grabbed hold and landed on top on the ground.
In Round 2, Carmouche found success with her striking combinations, set up nicely by low calf kicks. Bennett took the fight to the canvas but Carmouche returned back up.
Round 3 was similar. Carmouche landed some good strikes before Bennett tied up her up against the fence and took the fight down. Bennett controlled Carmouche on the mat for the remainder of the round.
In Round 4, Carmouche spent the early stages defending a takedown from Bennett. A front choke neutralized Bennett’s attempted. Carmouche eventually worked her way into top control where she slowly worked her way to an arm-triangle submission. Bennett’s legs flailed with the tap.
Bellator 294 wasn’t the first time Carmouche and Bennett competed against one another. They made their simultaneous Bellator debuts in September 2020 when Carmouche defeated Bennett by third-round submission. Bennett also missed weight for that bout.
The victory Friday extended Carmouche’s winning streak to five and marked her second successful title defense.
With the win, Carmouche defeats Bennett for the second time and remains undefeated in Bellator. The first UFC women’s title challenger in history, Carmouche signed with Bellator in December 2019. Three straight wins in the promotion earned her a title shot against Juliana Velasquez, who she defeated twice in back-to-back fights.
Bennett has a three-fight winning streak snapped with the loss. She entered the fight coming off of two wins against the same opponent, Justine Kish.
Bellator champ Liz Carmouche thinks cardio will play a big factor in beating DeAnna Bennett again.
HONOLULU – [autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag] thinks cardio will play a big factor in her beating [autotag]DeAnna Bennett[/autotag] again.
Flyweight champion Carmouche (18-7 MMA, 5-0 BMMA) rematches Bennett (13-7-1 MMA, 3-1 BMMA) in Friday’s Bellator 294 main event at Neal S. Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu. The main card airs on Showtime following prelims on MMA Junkie.
Carmouche submitted Bennett in the third round at Bellator 246 in September 2020. The fight was each of their promotional debuts. Since then, Bennett has won three straight, but Carmouche doesn’t expect anything different from her. She also sees the extra two championship rounds playing in her favor.
“I think her best representation of herself is when she faced me the first time,” Carmouche told MMA Junkie and other reporters at a pre-fight news conference Wednesday. “In that fight she wasn’t able to do what she needed to. I think she wants to come out stronger than she did and hope to pressure me, and keep the foot on the gas.
“I don’t think she has the gas tank for five rounds. So in her mind, if she can come out early, if she can come out fast, if she can come out strong, she can hopefully go for a finish. But I prepared for that, I prepared to go 10 rounds, you name it. So there’s not a circumstance I see where she’s able to have done enough growth in her previous fight to prepare for this one.”
[lawrence-related id=2634147,304317,2635279]
Bennett missed weight big in her first fight against Carmouche, coming in 5.7 pounds over the non-title flyweight limit of 126. For their second meeting, Bennett failed to make weight again, this time weighing 126.2 on her final attempt to make championship weight.
When asked to comment on Bennett’s strength, Carmouche said it’s hard to gauge.
“There was such a significant weight difference,” Carmouche said. “Our fight was getting pulled. I had to really lobby to keep the fight. The commission wanted to step in and pull it because she was so far off weight. So I can’t tell if the strength came from the significant weight difference or that’s how actually strong she is. I won’t know until Friday night.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 294.
Watch Liz Carmouche run through Kana Watanabe at Bellator 261.
[autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag] proved she still has power in Bellator.
Back in the summer of 2021, Carmouche (18-7 MMA, 5-0 BMMA) picked up her first TKO victory since putting away Jessica Andrade in 2013 during her UFC days, as she quickly dispatched [autotag]Kana Watanabe[/autotag] in a first-round TKO win at Bellator 261.
It was a quick and dominant finish that got a chance to fight for the Bellator women’s flyweight title – an opportunity she made the most of by dethroning then-champ Juliana Velasquez at Bellator 278 last April.
You can watch her impressive finish in the video above.
Now, a year later, Carmouche is scheduled to make her second title defense. She takes on DeAnna Bennett (13-7-1 MMA, 3-1 BMMA) this Friday in the main event of Bellator 294, which takes place Friday at Neal S. Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu.
The main card airs on Showtime following prelims on MMA Junkie.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 294.
“I knew I would see her again. I knew she would be champion, so I felt like it would be for the title.”
HONOLULU – [autotag]DeAnna Bennett[/autotag] isn’t surprised the stars aligned for a rematch with [autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag].
Carmouche (18-7 MMA, 5-0 BMMA) defends her title against Bennett (13-7-1 MMA, 3-1 BMMA) in Friday’s Bellator 294 headliner at Neal S. Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu. The main card airs on Showtime following prelims on MMA Junkie.
In what was each of their Bellator debuts, Carmouche submitted Bennett in September 2020. Carmouche later captured the Bellator flyweight title against Juliana Velasquez, and Bennett hasn’t lost since which set her up for the rematch – this time, with much larger stakes.
“You have to take each fight independently,” Bennett told MMA Junkie and other reporters at a pre-fight news conference Wednesday. “It’s been a couple years. I’m a different fighter. She’s a different fighter. I’m at a completely different camp now in Philly with Marquez MMA and joining teams for that. But you have to go back and look at the first fight and see what you did right, what she did right, what I did wrong.
“… I knew I would see her again. I knew she would be champion, so I felt like it would be for the title. So I hoped that when I brought myself back up to the spot where I could be in title contention, I hoped she’d still have the title at that point. I knew she was already going to be the champion because she’s such a great fighter. My hopes paid off because she’s still the champion and our rematch is for the title. I’m so incredibly excited for this. I can’t stop smiling just because the opportunity is finally here. I’m just happy.”
[lawrence-related id=2635562,2635501]
According to BetMGM, Bennett is a sizable +360 underdog against Carmouche, who is the -500 favorite. But “The Ultimate Fighter 26” alum is paying no mind to the odds.
“Who was it, Rodney Dangerfield? ‘I don’t get no respect,'” Bennett said. “I’m not even fazed by it. I don’t expect anyone to know who I am. My manager and everybody are like, ‘You need to do more self-promotion’… and of course I want to do that, but my focus has been training, My focus has been fighting and proving myself in the cage.”
Bennett continued, “I know what I did in that fight, and I proved a little bit to myself. People take it at face value because if they didn’t see the fight, then they just see the result of it, it’s a loss on my record. Cool. And if they want to think that and if they want the betting records to be that, cool. I’ll make some people some money when they bet on me.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 294.
Check out which UFC veterans are in MMA and boxing action across the globe this weekend.
This week, the UFC is back in Las Vegas at the UFC Apex for a heavyweight showdown. In the main event, [autotag]Sergei Pavlovich[/autotag] takes on [autotag]Curtis Blaydes[/autotag] in a fight scheduled for five rounds.
Elsewhere, many other MMA and boxing events are taking place that feature a number of familiar names that have competed under the UFC banner.
This weekend, there are a total of 18 veterans of the global MMA leader competing in MMA and boxing this week from April 21-23.
Check out the names and details about their bouts below.
It was five years ago that Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche introduced the UFC to women’s MMA with a historic bout that paved the way for more divisions and more women.
(Editor’s note: This story was first published Feb. 23, 2018.)
It was the evening of Feb. 23, 2013, and those roughly half a million souls watching the UFC 157 main event were in the process of experiencing a “gigantic cultural moment,” according to longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan.
Wearing her trademark scowl, [autotag]Ronda Rousey[/autotag] made the walk to the octagon for the first time. Waiting for her inside the cage was [autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag], a challenger on a modest two-fight winning streak who also added another first to the UFC’s historic night – the first openly gay fighter to compete in the promotion’s cage.
Funny how, just a couple years earlier, UFC President Dana White had confidently insisted that this day would never come. Now that it had finally arrived, there were few people more outwardly excited about it than he was. But it didn’t happen overnight. And who knows when (if ever) it would have happened if not for Rousey, who burst onto the MMA scene in 2011 and quickly became the focus of the women’s division.
It all started in Strikeforce, the one-time rival to the UFC that embraced women’s MMA beginning in its first year of operations. While women’s bouts had flourished on smaller stages both overseas and domestically, with organizations like Jeff Osborne’s HOOKnSHOOT, it was in Strikeforce that key divisions like women’s bantamweight really started to grow up.
Fighters like Gina Carano, Miesha Tate, Sarah Kaufman, Marloes Coenen, Roxanne Modafferi, they all honed their skills in Scott Coker’s Strikeforce.
But in late 2011, it was an Olympic bronze medalist named Ronda Rousey who started stealing the spotlight with her quick submission victories. In three fights as an amateur and four fights as a pro, she’d yet to be taken past the first minute of the first round. Even more notable, all her fights ended the exact same way – with an armbar.
Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche face off at UFC 157 weigh-ins. (AP)
But it wasn’t just her performances inside the cage that drew people’s attention. Rousey also had a gift for the sound bite, stinging potential opponents in interviews and demanding a shot at the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title after just two fights as a featherweight with the organization.
In addition to her good looks and natural charisma, Rousey had a certain urgency that set her apart from her peers. She wasn’t content just to win fights quickly; she wanted it all in a hurry, and she didn’t mind stepping on other people’s toes to get it.
[lawrence-related id=304327]
That’s how Rousey seemingly jumped to the front of the line for a title fight against reigning Strikeforce champion Miesha Tate in 2012. While Strikeforce had been purchased by the UFC’s parent company the year before, it was still operating as its own entity when the organization and its TV partner, Showtime, went all-in on promoting the Rousey-Tate fight. The effort included slick ads showing both women transitioning from evening wear to cage attire, leading up to an intense face-off in the end.
Tate would prove to be Rousey’s toughest test, which is to say that it took Rousey until the final minute of the first round to turn her arm into a twist tie. At the time, it felt like the biggest thing to happen in women’s MMA since Carano vs. Cyborg.
Then Rousey kept defending her title while Strikeforce played out its last days before a final shutdown, until finally in December of 2012 White announced what by then seemed inevitable: Rousey was coming to the UFC, and she was bringing the women’s bantamweight division with her.
White liked what he saw in Rousey & believed that she could help build women's MMA. In December of 2012, Ronda Rousey was declared the UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion.
Carmouche was by no means an obvious choice as Rousey’s first opponent. She’d put herself on the WMMA map with a surprisingly strong performance in a losing effort against then-Strikeforce champion Coenen in 2011, then dropped a decision to Kaufman in her next fight. But after winning two straight in the first two Invicta FC events, she seemed like a dependable, known quantity, and one with a personal story worth telling.
Ronda Rousey at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
When people questioned Carmouche’s credentials as a challenger, White explained that the UFC had wanted to match Rousey up with featherweight phenom Cris Cyborg, but the bout didn’t come together.
“That was obviously the fight we wanted to make,” White said. “We wanted to do that at 135 pounds, and we worked hard to make that fight. I believe this fight will happen. I truly believe the next fight will be the Cyborg fight. This fight first and then Cyborg will happen at 135 pounds.”
In episodes of “UFC Primetime” leading up to UFC 157, Rousey predictably got the greater share of the spotlight, but Carmouche was there as the no-frills former Marine living a spartan existence with her girlfriend in San Diego. They may not have had a kitchen table, but they were happy, and here was Carmouche’s big chance to change their lives forever.
Of course, it wasn’t hard to see that few people wanted the bout to go that way. Rousey was the superstar driving interest in this fight. Throughout fight week in Southern California, she drew attention from mainstream media outlets, as well as crowds of fans at every possible turn.
White didn’t shy away from the fact that it was Rousey alone who convinced him to rethink his stance on women’s MMA, which left an unanswered question hanging over the impending event: What if she lost?
Was the UFC really interested in a women’s division, or was it only interested in the Ronda Show?
White attempted to allay those concerns at a Q&A the day before the event, telling fans that the UFC already had 10 female bantamweights under contract with plans to add five more. Still, only six fighters (Rousey, Carmouche, Tate, Cat Zingano, Sara McMann, and Alexis Davis) had been announced as UFC signees by that point. Longtime staples of the division like Kaufman and Julie Kedzie didn’t find out that their Strikeforce contracts had been absorbed until a tweet from a reporter announced it later on.
Many of those fighters were in attendance at Honda Center in Anaheim on fight night, and why wouldn’t they be? The day they’d been waiting for had finally arrived, even if it was Rousey in the spot they’d all hoped to claim for themselves.
Carmouche, the challenger, entered first, wearing the usual hodgepodge of MMA sponsors. Rousey walked second, wearing UFC branded gear (unusual in the pre-Reebok era), which only seemed to solidify the notion that the company had more invested in one of these fighters than the other.
“This is not just a moment for Ronda Rousey; this is a moment for women’s sports, period,” Rogan said during her entrance. “This is going to open the door to so many young women that never thought about doing this as a career.”
About Carmouche, Rogan noted that she had dedicated her training camp to defending the armbar and had reportedly been shutting down the training partners who tried it on her.
Liz Carmouche and Ronda Rousey at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
“Do (those training partners) have the skill of Ronda Rousey?” Rogan said. “Probably not, if they’re a woman.”
As soon as the fight began, Rousey did what she’d always done, charging straight across the cage and attempting to punch her way into a clinch. It wasn’t long before she’d trapped Carmouche against the fence, working a trip from a head-and-arm position to slowly drag her to the mat.
But as Rousey committed to controlling Carmouche’s head with one arm while trying to isolate a limb with the other, Carmouche managed to slip out and sit up to take Rousey’s back just as the champion got to her feet.
Not only was it a dangerous position, but it was also eerily reminiscent from a finish earlier in the night, when Urijah Faber submitted a standing Ivan Menjivar with a rear-naked choke. Now here was Carmouche, looking not unlike Faber when her hair was in braids, wrapping her forearm across Rousey’s jaw and squeezing for the finish.
Or, as Rogan put it on the UFC 157 broadcast: “She’s getting her face cranked!”
Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
But Rousey stayed calm and soon she was out. She fought off the hooks and dumped Carmouche to her back, pausing a moment to adjust her UFC sports bra before stepping through Carmouche’s guard and spinning into side control.
Now Rousey was right back where she wanted to be, controlling Carmouche’s head while isolating an arm and peppering her with punches. Carmouche held tough and kept her arm close. But soon Rousey stepped over and latched on the armbar. When Carmouche stood to defend, Rousey rolled her over, then readjusted her grip and, in the final minute of the opening round, peeling off Carmouche’s defenses and extended her right arm.
Carmouche had no choice then. Like everyone else, she saw what happened to Tate when she refused to tap. She could submit and lose, or hold out and give up the use of her arm for the next few weeks – and lose anyway. Wisely, she chose the former.
It was a triumph for Rousey, albeit an expected one. But now she could stand grinning in the cage with a UFC title belt that finally felt like hers, asking Rogan in the post-fight interview, “Is this real life?”
As she fought off the choke, she explained, she was also fighting off a potential wardrobe malfunction.
“I was trying to think about my bra falling down and her on my back at the same time,” Rousey said. “So next time, bigger bra.”
When it was Carmouche’s turn to be interviewed, Rogan showed her the clip of her wrenching Rousey’s face from the back, adding, “and it looked bad – well, it looked good for you.”
Ronda Rousey after beating Liz Carmouche at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
Afterwards, Carmouche would show up smiling at the post-fight press conference almost as if she’d won (or as if she’d made enough even in defeat to take some of the sting off the loss).
Rousey seemed mostly glad for the experience to be over. When she spoke, you could hear the fatigue along with the relief in her voice. She’d spent weeks carrying a heavy load, not only for the UFC but for women’s MMA in general. All those peers who’d resented her back when she was skipping the line and stealing the show? They’d end up counting on her, and she’d clearly felt the weight of their expectations.
“I felt like we really did live up to the whole hype of it,” Rousey said at the post-fight press conference. “The place was going nuts. I’m glad it was a full house. I was just honored to be a part of it. It was a special night.”
It really was. And it was also only the beginning.
Rousey finished Carmouche with an armbar. The first women's fight in UFC history & a historic moment for our sport. pic.twitter.com/Q82JFMmXUO
“Today in MMA History” is an MMAjunkie series created in association with MMA History Today, the social media outlet dedicated to reliving “a daily journey through our sport’s history.”
Fight footage courtesy of UFC Fight Pass, the UFC’s official digital subscription service, which is currently offering a seven-day free trial. UFC Fight Pass gives fans access to exclusive live UFC events and fights, exclusive live MMA and combat sports events from around the world, exclusive original and behind the scenes content and unprecedented 24-7 access to the world’s biggest fight library.
It was five years ago that Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche introduced the UFC to women’s MMA with a historic bout that paved the way for more divisions and more women.
(Editor’s note: This story was first published Feb. 23, 2018.)
It was the evening of Feb. 23, 2013, and those roughly half a million souls watching the UFC 157 main event were in the process of experiencing a “gigantic cultural moment,” according to longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan.
Wearing her trademark scowl, [autotag]Ronda Rousey[/autotag] made the walk to the octagon for the first time. Waiting for her inside the cage was [autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag], a challenger on a modest two-fight winning streak who also added another first to the UFC’s historic night – the first openly gay fighter to compete in the promotion’s cage.
Funny how, just a couple years earlier, UFC President Dana White had confidently insisted that this day would never come. Now that it had finally arrived, there were few people more outwardly excited about it than he was. But it didn’t happen overnight. And who knows when (if ever) it would have happened if not for Rousey, who burst onto the MMA scene in 2011 and quickly became the focus of the women’s division.
It all started in Strikeforce, the one-time rival to the UFC that embraced women’s MMA beginning in its first year of operations. While women’s bouts had flourished on smaller stages both overseas and domestically, with organizations like Jeff Osborne’s HOOKnSHOOT, it was in Strikeforce that key divisions like women’s bantamweight really started to grow up.
Fighters like Gina Carano, Miesha Tate, Sarah Kaufman, Marloes Coenen, Roxanne Modafferi, they all honed their skills in Scott Coker’s Strikeforce.
But in late 2011, it was an Olympic bronze medalist named Ronda Rousey who started stealing the spotlight with her quick submission victories. In three fights as an amateur and four fights as a pro, she’d yet to be taken past the first minute of the first round. Even more notable, all her fights ended the exact same way – with an armbar.
Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche face off at UFC 157 weigh-ins. (AP)
But it wasn’t just her performances inside the cage that drew people’s attention. Rousey also had a gift for the sound bite, stinging potential opponents in interviews and demanding a shot at the Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title after just two fights as a featherweight with the organization.
In addition to her good looks and natural charisma, Rousey had a certain urgency that set her apart from her peers. She wasn’t content just to win fights quickly; she wanted it all in a hurry, and she didn’t mind stepping on other people’s toes to get it.
[lawrence-related id=304327]
That’s how Rousey seemingly jumped to the front of the line for a title fight against reigning Strikeforce champion Miesha Tate in 2012. While Strikeforce had been purchased by the UFC’s parent company the year before, it was still operating as its own entity when the organization and its TV partner, Showtime, went all-in on promoting the Rousey-Tate fight. The effort included slick ads showing both women transitioning from evening wear to cage attire, leading up to an intense face-off in the end.
Tate would prove to be Rousey’s toughest test, which is to say that it took Rousey until the final minute of the first round to turn her arm into a twist tie. At the time, it felt like the biggest thing to happen in women’s MMA since Carano vs. Cyborg.
Then Rousey kept defending her title while Strikeforce played out its last days before a final shutdown, until finally in December of 2012 White announced what by then seemed inevitable: Rousey was coming to the UFC, and she was bringing the women’s bantamweight division with her.
White liked what he saw in Rousey & believed that she could help build women's MMA. In December of 2012, Ronda Rousey was declared the UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion.
Carmouche was by no means an obvious choice as Rousey’s first opponent. She’d put herself on the WMMA map with a surprisingly strong performance in a losing effort against then-Strikeforce champion Coenen in 2011, then dropped a decision to Kaufman in her next fight. But after winning two straight in the first two Invicta FC events, she seemed like a dependable, known quantity, and one with a personal story worth telling.
Ronda Rousey at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
When people questioned Carmouche’s credentials as a challenger, White explained that the UFC had wanted to match Rousey up with featherweight phenom Cris Cyborg, but the bout didn’t come together.
“That was obviously the fight we wanted to make,” White said. “We wanted to do that at 135 pounds, and we worked hard to make that fight. I believe this fight will happen. I truly believe the next fight will be the Cyborg fight. This fight first and then Cyborg will happen at 135 pounds.”
In episodes of “UFC Primetime” leading up to UFC 157, Rousey predictably got the greater share of the spotlight, but Carmouche was there as the no-frills former Marine living a spartan existence with her girlfriend in San Diego. They may not have had a kitchen table, but they were happy, and here was Carmouche’s big chance to change their lives forever.
Of course, it wasn’t hard to see that few people wanted the bout to go that way. Rousey was the superstar driving interest in this fight. Throughout fight week in Southern California, she drew attention from mainstream media outlets, as well as crowds of fans at every possible turn.
White didn’t shy away from the fact that it was Rousey alone who convinced him to rethink his stance on women’s MMA, which left an unanswered question hanging over the impending event: What if she lost?
Was the UFC really interested in a women’s division, or was it only interested in the Ronda Show?
White attempted to allay those concerns at a Q&A the day before the event, telling fans that the UFC already had 10 female bantamweights under contract with plans to add five more. Still, only six fighters (Rousey, Carmouche, Tate, Cat Zingano, Sara McMann, and Alexis Davis) had been announced as UFC signees by that point. Longtime staples of the division like Kaufman and Julie Kedzie didn’t find out that their Strikeforce contracts had been absorbed until a tweet from a reporter announced it later on.
Many of those fighters were in attendance at Honda Center in Anaheim on fight night, and why wouldn’t they be? The day they’d been waiting for had finally arrived, even if it was Rousey in the spot they’d all hoped to claim for themselves.
Carmouche, the challenger, entered first, wearing the usual hodgepodge of MMA sponsors. Rousey walked second, wearing UFC branded gear (unusual in the pre-Reebok era), which only seemed to solidify the notion that the company had more invested in one of these fighters than the other.
“This is not just a moment for Ronda Rousey; this is a moment for women’s sports, period,” Rogan said during her entrance. “This is going to open the door to so many young women that never thought about doing this as a career.”
About Carmouche, Rogan noted that she had dedicated her training camp to defending the armbar and had reportedly been shutting down the training partners who tried it on her.
Liz Carmouche and Ronda Rousey at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
“Do (those training partners) have the skill of Ronda Rousey?” Rogan said. “Probably not, if they’re a woman.”
As soon as the fight began, Rousey did what she’d always done, charging straight across the cage and attempting to punch her way into a clinch. It wasn’t long before she’d trapped Carmouche against the fence, working a trip from a head-and-arm position to slowly drag her to the mat.
But as Rousey committed to controlling Carmouche’s head with one arm while trying to isolate a limb with the other, Carmouche managed to slip out and sit up to take Rousey’s back just as the champion got to her feet.
Not only was it a dangerous position, but it was also eerily reminiscent from a finish earlier in the night, when Urijah Faber submitted a standing Ivan Menjivar with a rear-naked choke. Now here was Carmouche, looking not unlike Faber when her hair was in braids, wrapping her forearm across Rousey’s jaw and squeezing for the finish.
Or, as Rogan put it on the UFC 157 broadcast: “She’s getting her face cranked!”
Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
But Rousey stayed calm and soon she was out. She fought off the hooks and dumped Carmouche to her back, pausing a moment to adjust her UFC sports bra before stepping through Carmouche’s guard and spinning into side control.
Now Rousey was right back where she wanted to be, controlling Carmouche’s head while isolating an arm and peppering her with punches. Carmouche held tough and kept her arm close. But soon Rousey stepped over and latched on the armbar. When Carmouche stood to defend, Rousey rolled her over, then readjusted her grip and, in the final minute of the opening round, peeling off Carmouche’s defenses and extended her right arm.
Carmouche had no choice then. Like everyone else, she saw what happened to Tate when she refused to tap. She could submit and lose, or hold out and give up the use of her arm for the next few weeks – and lose anyway. Wisely, she chose the former.
It was a triumph for Rousey, albeit an expected one. But now she could stand grinning in the cage with a UFC title belt that finally felt like hers, asking Rogan in the post-fight interview, “Is this real life?”
As she fought off the choke, she explained, she was also fighting off a potential wardrobe malfunction.
“I was trying to think about my bra falling down and her on my back at the same time,” Rousey said. “So next time, bigger bra.”
When it was Carmouche’s turn to be interviewed, Rogan showed her the clip of her wrenching Rousey’s face from the back, adding, “and it looked bad – well, it looked good for you.”
Ronda Rousey after beating Liz Carmouche at UFC 157. (USA TODAY Sports)
Afterwards, Carmouche would show up smiling at the post-fight press conference almost as if she’d won (or as if she’d made enough even in defeat to take some of the sting off the loss).
Rousey seemed mostly glad for the experience to be over. When she spoke, you could hear the fatigue along with the relief in her voice. She’d spent weeks carrying a heavy load, not only for the UFC but for women’s MMA in general. All those peers who’d resented her back when she was skipping the line and stealing the show? They’d end up counting on her, and she’d clearly felt the weight of their expectations.
“I felt like we really did live up to the whole hype of it,” Rousey said at the post-fight press conference. “The place was going nuts. I’m glad it was a full house. I was just honored to be a part of it. It was a special night.”
It really was. And it was also only the beginning.
Rousey finished Carmouche with an armbar. The first women's fight in UFC history & a historic moment for our sport. pic.twitter.com/Q82JFMmXUO
“Today in MMA History” is an MMAjunkie series created in association with MMA History Today, the social media outlet dedicated to reliving “a daily journey through our sport’s history.”
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Check out these photos highlighting Ronda Rousey’s submission win over Liz Carmouche in the first women’s fight in UFC history
Check out these photos highlighting [autotag]Ronda Rousey[/autotag]’s submission win over [autotag]Liz Carmouche[/autotag] in the first women’s fight in UFC history on Feb. 23, 2014 at UFC 157 from Honda Center in Anaheim Calif. (Photos by Jayne Kamin-Oncea, USA TODAY Sports)
