“Once in a lifetime doesn’t apply to Ronda Rousey. It’s once ever in human history,” Joe Rogan famously said back in 2015 before Ronda Rousey’s fight with Holly Holm, a statement that didn’t age well. At UFC 193, ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ pulled off one of the biggest upsets in UFC history, head-kicking ‘Rowdy’ into oblivion to claim the women’s bantamweight title. Following that loss, Rousey’s career never recovered, as Amanda Nunes later finished her even more brutally at UFC 207. Recently, Rousey had some comments about Joe Rogan, which put her under fire. 

The former women’s bantamweight queen took a jab at the UFC color commentator during a chat with comedian Bert Kreischer. She claimed that Rogan is not an expert of the sport and thus wouldn’t know much. Just like that, the internet lit up with mixed reactions, many criticizing Rousey’s comments against Joe Rogan, despite his years of support for her throughout her career. Interestingly, even the current women’s flyweight champion, Valentina Shevchenko, stepped in to defend Rogan as well. And now, following the trend, former UFC star and analyst Chael Sonnen has also decided to weigh in on the situation by questioning her GOAT status.  

‘The Bad Guy’ on his YouTube channel talked about the women’s rankings system during Ronda Rousey’s era, when there were only ten contenders. He said, “When you do have ten names that can fog a mirror and go on the list. Until they actually compete or run into what we call common opponents, there’s no verifiable way, with any level of validity, to say who goes where.”

Here, Sonnen wanted to highlight that to evaluate Rousey’s GOAT status truly, one must recognize that many of her opponents never fought each other. For instance, Cat Zingano and Bethe Correia, both of Rousey’s opponents, never crossed paths. It wasn’t until Holly Holm beat Rousey at UFC 193 that Miesha Tate, who had faced Rousey back in Strikeforce, captured the belt by defeating Holm at UFC 196. Still, according to Chael, that isn’t enough.

He feels that the ‘GOAT’ status cannot be given to a fighter who defeats someone way below in the rankings. Chael says the fighter should at least fight opponents who are closer in the rankings.

Following that, ‘The American Gangster’ explained what he believes is the real metric for determining GOAT status, which is examining what Rousey’s opponents accomplished after facing her. 

Sonnen might be refering to Miesha Tate, who went on to face Holm. Or perhaps he didn’t consider Tate since her loss to Rousey happened back in Strikeforce. Either way, Sonnen was unclear. However, ‘The Bad Guy’ ended up bringing another example to add more weight to his analysis.

Sonnen references former double champ to push back on Rowdy’s GOAT talks  

The UFC’s outspoken analyst compared Rousey’s run to that of Georges St-Pierre. According to Sonnen, ‘GSP’ had a far stronger championship tenure and consistency of facing two waves of challengers, including former champ BJ Penn and challengers like Matt Hughes, that truly justified his place among the greatest of all time. 

Then the former champ circled back to his earlier point about how a fighter’s all-time greatness is defined by what their opponents accomplish in their absence. This time, he brought up the example of Johny Hendricks, who fought GSP at UFC 167. After St-Pierre stepped away, ‘Bigg Rigg’ went on to win the vacant title by defeating Robbie Lawler at UFC 171, only to lose it immediately in their rematch at UFC 181.    

Understanding what Sonnen wanted to say, it seems he might have stretched things a bit by comparing GSP’s legacy to Rousey’s. A more fitting example would have been Amanda Nunes and her dominant reign over the women’s bantamweight division. Still, that’s just ‘The American Gangster’s’ style of building an argument, which was bold and unconventional.

With that said, what do you think about the whole Rousey GOAT debate? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.