First there was one, and she was clever as clever, and we thought she would rule for ever and ever. Then there were two and the UFC had to find somebody else to lay the golden eggs, but could at least start plotting a tale of gutsy determination and gory revenge. Then a third came along and behold, we had ourselves a perfect triangle, equilateral, all three women accomplished at their own sort of thing.
When it comes to combat sports, it is often said that styles make fights. In the realm of boxing, these styles were traditionally threefold, with a swarmer who likes to get in close and throw flurries, a boxer who prefers to stay on the outside and land punches from a distance by virtue of their quick feet, and a slugger who stays firmly in the middle ground, relying on raw power.
The swarmer would beat the boxer, who couldn’t cope with their constant pressure, the boxer would outwit and outmanoeuvre the sluggish slugger, and the slugger would thump the swarmer hard on the chin every time they tried to rush in, a variation on rock-paper-scissors. Then someone came up with the concept of a boxer-puncher, a hybrid form superior by definition, and the triangle was broken.
Ronda Rousey’s triangles were usually broken too, even before her shock loss to Holly Holm at UFC 193 last November. She tended to win instead by way of armbar submission. When Holm defeated her to take the UFC Women’s Bantamweight Championship, analysts pointed to Holm’s world-class boxing as the skill which enabled her to stand apart. But in her first title defence, at UFC 196 in March, Holm lost in the fifth round to Miesha Tate, a fighter who had previously succumbed twice in her two bouts against Rousey.
Tate perhaps lacked Rousey’s supreme submission skills or Holm’s precision boxing, but she was a strong all-rounder and full of heart. These three were all the UFC had known as far as the Women’s Bantamweight Championship was concerned, and they were also all American.
But at UFC 200 over the weekend, in a fight bumped to the main event, Amanda Nunes dismantled Tate early in the first round thanks to some devastating strikes and a rear-naked choke submission. Nunes, a Brazilian outsider, humble outside of the octagon but with a steely-eyed, smash-mouthed aggression once the bell rings, now has the belt and has blown the women’s division ineluctably wide open. The perfect triangle has become a disconnecting square, a loose-hanging rhombus. Nunes might be the UFC’s first openly gay champion, but are there no stories anymore worth telling?
