Floyd Mayweather vs Ronda Rousey? A Technical Breakdown

Floyd "Money" Mayweather has a weird cultural narrative around him.  He's often cast as the Bad Guy in WWE-style fight marketing whenever he has a boxing match, largely due to how arrogant he is and how extravagantly he spends his own money.  It's a silly act that works to create drama for a fight.  But he also has a very real record of domestic abuse, and the boxing media is usually pretty silent about the issue.

So, Money Mayweather is marketed as a terrible person for silly reasons, but is actually a terrible person in a way that those involved with the boxing industry are largely silent about.  Gotta love the bullshit theater behind professional sports, eh?

The man is great at two things: boxing and trolling people.

Well, UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda "Rowdy" Rousey has taken shots at Money Mayweather for his history of domestic abuse.  Her most recent dig came after winning the ESPY Fighter of the Year award, when she sarcastically wondered how it felt for a girl to be beating him for a change (Mayweather was also nominated for the award).  He responded with an uninspired comment about how much money he makes, and now the internet is abuzz with talks of a hypothetical Money vs Rowdy match up.

There are plenty of people, qualified and unqualified alike, offering their opinions as to who would win in a hypothetical MMA fight between the two.  Rather than just give my opinion like everyone else, I'll break down different factors to consider in a hypothetical match between the two.

And no, this won't just be me saying "Mayweather's hope lies in his boxing while Rousey's lies in her grappling" like everyone else.  We'll be digging a little deeper than that.

Factors in Rousey's Favor
1. Mayweather's Stance: When developing as a fighter of any sort, one deceptively important decision comes in the details of your stance.  Do you make your stance more side on, so that your lead leg and shoulder are far forward and your body is practically perpendicular with your opponent's, or should you be more squared up, so that your entire body is facing towards your opponent's?

No fighter will either square up completely or go completely side on.  The trick comes in deciding exactly how squared up or side on your stance should be.  In boxing, there is good argument to be made for standing more side on than squared up.  It presents less of a target to your opponent, and also allows you to protect your face better when you hide your chin behind your lead shoulder, which will absorb most shots aimed at your head from that side (this is known as a "shoulder roll").  Mayweather is a prime example of a boxer who stands in a very side on stance, and is an absolute super saiyan when it comes to using the shoulder roll.

Notice how he is almost perpendicular to his opponent, and because of that

his lead shoulder protects him from his opponent's right hand quite nicely.

It serves him very well in boxing.  In MMA (as well as kickboxing), however, there are a lot more than just punches to take into account.

When you stand in a side on stance like Mayweather does, your lead leg is very far forward.  This is good in that it gives you range, but it also leaves your leg very exposed to attack.  This doesn't matter in boxing, of course, but in a combat sport where kicks are allowed, it becomes a serious problem.  In the UFC, fights have been won by TKOs by leg kick, and even fights that don't end explicitly in TKO by leg kick can still be decided by them because they severely limit movement when done consistently and with effort.

Against someone like Mayweather, who has no experience dealing with kicks, Rousey could go to town on his lead leg.  She could also go for single leg takedowns against that leg; it's not her specialty, since she is much more adept at the clinch, but against someone as untrained in grappling as Mayweather she'd still be able to get the single leg pretty consistently.

2.  The Clinch: No, this isn't me insulting your fighting knowledge by saying Rousey has an advantage here.  What I'm talking about is Mayweather's love of the clinch.  Money has made a science of not getting hit in his matches; when he is at range, he uses his fantastic footwork, head movement, and aforementioned shoulder rollering to avoid damage.  When he's forced into an up close exchange, however, one of his favorite tactics is to dive into the clinch after throwing a combination.  This happens time and time again in his matches, including against Manny Pacquiao, which upset a lot of people who expect boxing matches to be Rock Em Sock Em Robot matches where fighters stand in front of each other and exchange haymakers until someone falls down.

Though a lot of the memes made after the match were, admittedly, pretty hilarious.

Mayweather's tendency to clinch would get him into huge trouble against Rousey.  Now, obviously he'll be aware of this and wouldn't consciously choose to clinch against Rousey.  The issue, though, is that he has spent over two decades, day in and day out for hours on end, cultivating a boxing style that includes a habit of clinching with fellow boxers as a defense tactic.  That's not something that would be easily dropped after a few months, or even a year, of training against an instinct you have developed as long as someone born in the mid-90s has been alive.

3.  Variety of Attack: MMA is full of examples of "superior" strikers getting out-struck by people who are grappling specialists.  Often, fans will either attribute this to the striker having an "off night" against the grappler or the striker getting "exposed" by losing on the feet, depending on whether or not they were rooting for the striker.  What it actually is, however, is a case of MMA science.

When you're such a good grappler that your opponent is afraid of grappling against you, it actually opens up your ability to land strikes.  The reason is this: defending against a clinch or takedown attempt is very different from defending against strikes.  A strategy that elite MMA fighters with a grappling base love to use is feinting a takedown, which causes an opponent to drop their hands, then throwing a strike that catches their opponent off-guard.  Former heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez is an ace at mixing up his grappling and striking offense this way.

Wrestling-based Velasquez would not have landed this many punches

against punching-specialist Dos Santos in a pure boxing match.

Ronda Rousey is no Cain Velasquez (that's not an insult- very few fighters can do what he does), but she nonetheless mixes up her strikes and grappling nicely, especially during her last few fights.  To be clear, her boxing needs work: she throws wild strikes and walks straight forward toward her opponents (more on that in the next section).  But when she comes toward them, her opponent has no idea if she is going to attempt to clinch or hit her, because she is known to alternate between both.  They have to be ready for anything, and spreading an opponent's defense thin like that means you can land good shots against someone who is theoretically the "better" striker.

Factors in Mayweather's Favor
1.   Physical Strength: I'm not going to go into this too much because most people know this already, but yes, cisgendered men are generally physically stronger than cisgendered women of the same size.  That would affect how the bout was fought, because Rousey would need to be much more careful about messing up against Floyd than the other way around.

Of course, we've seen it before where the smaller person uses superior fighting technique and strategy to beat the bigger person:

...but the fact remains that a disparity between their physical strength exists.

2.  Footwork: Mayweather is an expert at controlling range.  When he wants to get close, he clinches; when he wants to be far away, he uses his excellent footwork.  I already mentioned how his clinching would become a liability against Rousey, but his footwork would be exactly the opposite.

As I alluded to above, Rousey's main tactic for getting into the clinch against her opponents has been walking straight toward them and swinging away.  In her most recent match against the hilariously over-matched Bethe Correia she did exactly that.  Against someone like Mayweather, who has the ability to use his footwork to circle out against danger or come in on varied lines of attack, Rousey's tactic of walking straight forward to engage her opponent would fail miserably.

3.  Body Shots: If Rousey's key to slowing down Mayweather is leg kicks, then Mayweather's best shot at slowing down Rousey is through body shots.  Good body shots are devastating (I know from experience; I dreaded them in both boxing and muay thai sparring).  They also rob you of energy.  Because MMA fighters don't have time to develop their striking ability as much as boxers and kickboxers do, however, they often neglect body shots and mostly hunt for the head when throwing their punches (though there are exceptions, such as the aforementioned Junior Dos Santos and the Diaz brothers).

Dos Santos landing a body shot, which we don't see enough of in MMA.

Boxers are much better at throwing body shots consistently, and Mayweather is no exception.  He goes to the body often, and uses this as an important part of his fighting strategy.  There's the old saying in boxing that when someone covers the head, you attack the body, and when they cover the body, you attack the head.  Floyd, like every other high level boxer, uses this strategy.  If he could land body shots consistently against Rousey, she'd fatigue quickly and possibly drop her guard, allowing for Mayweather to aim shots at her head.

Keys to Victory
Rousey: Rousey's biggest key to victory would be to attack that lead leg which Mayweather leaves sticking out while in his heavily side on stance.  She could attempt leg kicks to slow him down and draw out the match, single leg takedowns to try and get him to the ground and end it quickly, or, ideally, alternate between both.  If she did this while improving her ring craft to a level that she isn't just walking straight forward and swinging, she would eventually get the fight to the ground and undoubtedly finish it.

Mayweather:  Mayweather would want to use his footwork to control the range of the fight.  He'd have to stay mostly on the outside, only coming in on smart lines of attack to throw a few punches then get right back out before Rousey could get her hands on him.  He'd want to make sure he alternated between shots to the body and head in order to keep Rousey guessing.  Every additional way in which he could make himself elusive would, of course, come in handy.

Verdict
It would be an intense fight, but in the end, history has shown that as long as a grappler has at least a little striking competence, they will beat the striker with little grappling competence, even if there's a strength gap.  We saw it when Royce Gracie dominated the early UFC tournaments, even when his opponents out-weighed him dramatically (before weight classes, 176 pound Royce often went up against men who weighed well over 200 pounds).  We continued to see it time and time again in Pride and the UFC, before fighters became well rounded enough that striking specialists learned basic grappling techniques and defense.

The greatest MMA heavyweight of all time, Fedor Emelianenko, weighed in the range of

about 220-230 pounds in his prime, and was the smaller guy in almost all of his fights.

In this throwback to 90s/early 00's-era MMA, all Rousey would need against Mayweather is one chance to get the fight to the ground.  That could come about in a number of ways: catching Mayweather in the clinch as he steps in for an attack; getting a single leg takedown on Mayweather's vulnerable lead leg; being able to initiate the clinch against Mayweather later in the fight after cutting off his mobility with repeated leg kicks; Mayweather instinctively clinching against her, as he has a habit of doing.  It would only take one of these things happening, at any point during the fight, for Rousey to get the fight to the ground, in which case the fight would play out similarly to Randy Couture vs James Toney.

A lot of people think the strength disparity would be too much for Rousey to overcome.  And in the striking exchanges, they very well would be.  If Rousey got it in her head that she could actually beat him while staying in striking range the entire match she'd probably lose very quickly, even if her boxing skill level were at all comparable to Mayweather's (and it definitely isn't).

But MMA has a science and set of tactics behind it that are very different than boxing's, and Rousey's experience with and understanding of them outweighs Mayweather's substantially.  Physical strength matters- there's a reason why weight classes exist- but there is an irrefutable mountain of evidence that shows elite skill set can overcome a physical strength disparity if the physically stronger person isn't near their opponent's skill level.

Prediction: Rousey.

Fighting GIF Breakdown

For me, one of the coolest parts about watching professional fighting matches is breaking down the hows and whys for everything we see on screen.  Physical attributes like strength and speed are very important factors in a fight, and obviously play a huge part in who makes it to the big leagues.  But here's the thing: many top combat athletes have comparable speed and strength, and often wins we attribute to physical factors are actually tactical victories.

In this post, I'll use some GIFs from different boxing, kickboxing, and MMA matches to show what I mean.  All of these GIFs are from the awesome blog MMA-GIFs, many of them created by the person (persons?) who runs the page.







What's great about this uppercut is how red gloves uses some basic striking principles to land it.  Notice how an instant before he throws it, he steps sliiiiiightly to his right (check his right foot), and also leans his upper body to the right.  This moves him off of the center line of attack that his opponent is currently swinging wildly through.  Black gloves has his gloves in front of his face to shield him, but this also blinds him to red gloves' subtle change in position.

Simultaneously, red gloves also throws his right uppercut from his right side, which is now off the center line.  Black gloves doesn’t even see the punch coming, and walks right into it.  Getting an opponent to walk into a punch always makes that punch land much harder, the same way a traffic accident will be more devastating with a head on collision than getting rear-ended.  It’s basic physics.



Red gloves sees the body jab coming from blue gloves and decides to crash in on it.  Sometimes when an opponent throws a straight punch (that is, the punch is reaching out straight in front of you, instead of something like a hook or an uppercut) to the body, if you can see it coming, you can crash in and jam up your opponent’s punch.  You’re moving in before their arm can extend all the way, so while they’re jammed you can throw a more appropriate punch for the short range you’re in (a hook or an uppercut).

In this case, homie thought he could do that, but blue gloves was really just throwing a quick little body jab to set up for his right cross that red gloves walked right into.  Like I said in the above breakdown, collisions: way more force.



A lot of times when an opponent lands a head kick, people remark "wow, it was so quick his opponent didn't see it coming!"  Now, of course, there are some fighters who are so quick and efficient with head kicks, that can sometimes be the case.  More often than not, however, head kicks come about as a result of careful setup.  By studying this picture, it becomes clear that this was a case of the latter.

Notice how when red gloves throws the kick, blue gloves lifts his leg.  This isn’t a case of “oh shit, I didn’t see a kick coming!”  Blue gloves saw the kick and believed it was coming for his leg, rather than his head, hence why he brought up his leg to check it.  This means his opponent had been kicking him repeatedly in the leg, conditioning him to think that was where his next kick would always be headed.  After doing this enough times, blue gloves raised his leg automatically anytime he saw a kick coming.  This time, however, the kick went for his head.

This is one of the most popular head kick set ups you will learn in any Muay Thai class.  Hammer away at the legs and/or body as much as you can.  Eventually, they will start trying to shield those areas reflexively when they sense a kick, and that's when you go to the head.  The exact same principle is in boxing, too: go for the body when they cover the head, and go for the head when they cover the body.



This picture is another example of why shielding your face with your gloves isn't the best defense.  Red gloves throws a nasty jab-cross combo that blue gloves covers up to avoid.  While putting your gloves in front of you like that you are blind, and there is always a split second where you have to move your gloves so you can see again.  Red gloves threw a kick during that split second moment, when blue gloves was lowering his gloves so he could see again.

A noteworthy detail here is that when red gloves threw his jab, he took a diagonal left-forward step.  This put him in a better position to launch attacks from both his rear hand and leg, because now they are that much closer to his opponent's center line.  This closing in distance means a slight downgrade in power, but a strike with slightly less power that lands is infinitely better than a stronger strike that doesn't.  Especially when the strike that lands is a head kick that the opponent doesn't see coming.



This one is from an MMA match between Georges St Pierre (red gloves) and Carlos Condit (blue gloves), who happens to be my favorite welterweight fighter.  In the match, Condit landed this beautiful head kick and was the first person in years to seriously threaten GSP's record-breaking run as the welterweight champion.  Unlike the previous GIFs, this is less about masterful striking fundamentals and more about the value of an unorthodox approach.

In most striking gyms, fighters are taught to try and throw strikes both during and after you duck or bob your head to avoid a punch.  That way, you're putting out offense as well as defense.  Most of the time, the moves are punches.  Throwing a kick as you're coming up from being hunched over is very difficult and requires a lot of flexibility.

In this match, Condit decided to throw a head kick instead.  Nobody saw it coming, least of all GSP.  One of the biggest risks about a headkick in MMA is how open it leaves you to being taken down; indeed, we had already seen it in this fight.  Here, however, he threw up during a time where few people do and was rewarded with a knockdown.

This shows the importance of trying new, unorthodox ways of applying something.  Sometimes it won't work out, but other times it will succeed wonderfully.