Thea Cox
The undefeated champion lost on November 14 to Holly Holm, a champion in boxing and kickboxing. This article is a little old, it came out in March, but considering the match last week I thought I would post it. This article focuses on Ronda Rousey, who was previously undefeated and has led people to question if she would ever fight a man. When Rousey was asked this question she said she wouldn’t do it because it would send a bad message having a man beat on a woman on national television. But, putting the domestic violence issue aside this article ask “why do we assume that a successful female athlete should move on to competing with male ones?” That somehow her achievements are less remarkable because they’ve all been against women.
Some people say it would just be an opportunity for Rousey to compete against the best of the best, which is true, but this article makes the argument that it doesn’t make sense to have fighters of different body types fight each other. If fighters do not normally fight outside their weight class why would they fight someone outside their gender. They say that hopefully one day more sports will become gender mixed, but expecting women to fight men to prove their better is saying that winning in women’s sports is a “secondary achievement”.