With the teams picked and the first match made, we now prepare for the real Ultimate Fighter competition to get under way. After granting Meisha Tate first pick of fighter upon winning the contest, Ronda Rousey elected to make the first match, pitting respected veteran Shayna Baszler against Team Tate’s Julianna Pena. The teaser at the end of the episode also alluded to something pushing Coach Rousey into kill-mode in regards to Coach Meisha, so we’ll take some time speculate at just what that is. First and foremost, though, we’ll be looking at the scheduled bout between “The Queen of Spades” and the “Venezuelan Vixen.”
TUF 18 Report: Episode 2 preview
To the Last…: Breaking Down Baszler vs. Pena
Shayna Baszler (15-8) has been around since the Wild West days of women’s MMA, competing since 2003 for everybody from Reality Cage Fighting to Invicta FC. In that time, she’s collected wins over such stalwarts as fellow TUF competitor Roxanne Modafferi and current UFC contender Alexis Davis. She does also have 8 losses, but those have come against high-level competition like Tara LaRosa and Olympic wrestling silver medalist Sara McMann. In fact, the bulk of “The Queen of Spades'” career has been spent fighting top 15 opposition. Her experience against high quality competition is almost as formidable as her vaunted grappling skills, with 14 of her 15 wins coming by way of submission. The catch wrestling specialist, trained in part by Josh Barnett, was even one of the first mixed martial artists – male or female – to finish a fight by way of Twister, doing so in 2008 in a bout with Keiko Tamai in ShoXC. Baszler came to the preliminary fights on the heels of a loss to Alexis Davis in a rematch in Invicta FC, and defeated Colleen Schneider – who was on a 4 fight win streak at the time – by submission.
Julianna Pena (4-2) has spent the bulk of her four-year career fighting at flyweight, winning her first 4 professional fights against competition in the Pacific Northwest’s regional circuit. In that time, she racked up victories over fighters with records best described as “middling.” When she moved up to bantamweight for the first time and took on a proper prospect in current teammate Sarah Moras, she was soundly thrashed until the doctor stopped the fight at the end of the second round. A return to flyweight in February of this year saw “The Venezuelan Vixen” fall to DeAnna Bennet, who has not fought since. In her initial winning streak, Pena finished 3 fights with 3 different submissions, and 1 by TKO, showing a fairly well-rounded skillset. In fact, the aggressive Sikjitsu fight team member has not seen the 3rd round in victory since her first amateur fight in February 2009. Pena appears to have turned a corner with her preliminary fight, though, as she dominated Gina Mazany – who was a 3-0 featherweight prior trying out for TUF – en route to a unanimous decision.
On paper, this is a mismatch of the highest order. To make a UFC roster comparison, it would be like booking Marcus Brimage against Donald Cerrone. Not only would it be putting someone against an opponent with far more experience, it’s matching them up with somebody a weight class higher. Even if you look at Baszler six fights into her career, while she was also 4-2, her only losses were to an at-the-time undefeated Kelly Kobold (7-0 at that point, 18-3 lifetime) and a surging Amanda Butler (6-3-1 & on a 3 fight win streak at the time, 11-5-1 lifetime). Each of those losses halted a two fight winning streak, and Baszler’s only consecutive losses would come at the hands of Cris “Cyborg” and Sarah Kaufman in late 2008/early 2009. When I look at this evidence objectively, I can’t help but pick Shayna Baszler to win this and advance to the next round. Julianna Pena will put up a valiant fight, but I don’t think she’s at the point in her career that she can beat “The Queen of Spades.”
Justin’s Prediction: Shayna Baszler def. Julianna Pena by Submission in Round 2.
Stabbing the Drama: Non-Fight Speculation and Analysis
It’s been all over the ads for this latest season of The Ultimate Fighter. Miesha Tate calling Ronda Rousey a “sourpants,” Ronda in tears vowing to make Tate “pay for every smile,” and the tense face-off where “Rowdy” slaps something away from “Cupcake.” None of this surprises me, to be honest. Ronda Rousey, for all her bravado, is like many elite athletes in that there is a fair amount of sensitivity beneath the bluster. She’s still young, and went through something that is best described as emotional meat grinder in her youth by competing in Judo at the highest levels, even qualifying for the 2004 Athens Olympics at the age of 17. That’s an awful lot of pressure for anybody to have to deal with, and can certainly lead to the development of a variety of coping mechanisms. When you’re already in a high-stress situation, and are then forced to deal with someone who has spent the better part of a year taking pot-shots at most anything you do after you’ve clearly kicked their ass, there’s no way that any reasonable person should be surprised that you’d snap.
Miesha Tate is not the easiest person in the world for many female fighters to deal with. Her words and actions outside of the cage – along with those of her boyfriend and assistant coach Brian Caraway – have put her on a lot of people’s crap-lists, and with good reason. The most recent example of this has been she and Caraway’s pre-and-post fight actions regarding her bout with Cat Zingano, in which “The Lightning Kid” allegedly hit Zingano in the back of the head with an intentional elbow at the weigh-ins and “Cupcake” refused to accept her stoppage loss. Since then, though, Tate has attempted to rehabilitate her image, taking part in an artistic nude photo shoot for ESPN Magazine’s “Body Issue” – of the kind she gave Ronda Rousey guff for last year – and doing her best to come off as smiley and approachable on the UFC’s world press tour this past summer. Whether this has been an actual change, or if the “mean girl” she’s developed a reputation for being is still lurking just beneath the surface remains to be seen. All we can say is that a fuse has blown, and that it’s anybody’s guess as to who actually caused the overload.
You can watch the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter: Rousey Vs. Tate on Wednesday at 6pm PST/9pm EST on FOX Sports 1 in the US and Sportsnet 360 in Canada. Don’t forget to keep it locked to MMASucka.com for more recaps, analysis, and the latest goings-on in mixed martial arts.
