Arm bar looms over Kaufman-Rousey bout
By BOB EMANUEL JR. | Scripps Howard News Service
Sarah Kaufman knows her opponent’s strength all too well.
Kaufman, the former Strikeforce women’s bantamweight champion, suffered the lone loss of her 16-fight career via arm bar to Marloes Coenen in 2010. Saturday night, the maneuver will play prominently in Kaufman’s bid to recapture her title when she faces Strikeforce bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in the main event of Strikeforce’s card at the Valley View Casino Center in San Diego. Rousey defeated her first eight opponents, including three amateurs, via arm bar submissions.
“Coming into a fight, you have to know that Ronda can go for the arm bar to keep her streak alive,” says Kaufman, a 26-year-old Canadian from Victoria, B.C. “She could mix it up, go for something different. You can’t focus too much on that one thing, but definitely making sure you’re doing an ample amount of repetition in the proper defense and making sure you’re getting out of good situations and getting out of bad situations and putting yourself in uncomfortable positions in training so hopefully you don’t get there in fighting.”
Rousey, a 25-year-old originally from Riverside County, Calif., first earned notoriety in judo, where she won a bronze medal for the United States in the 2008 Olympic Games. Two years later, she won her amateur MMA debut and turned professional seven months later.
While the arm bar has become her signature, other aspects of her MMA game remain largely a mystery because of the quick nature of her performances. All but her last fight, which took 4:27 to submit Miesha Tate to win the title, were finished in less than a minute.
“I hope they’re being underestimated,” Rousey says. “I want to be as underestimated as possible.” The less information her opponents have about her abilities “the better it is for me.”
Middleweights Ronaldo Souza and Derek Brunson highlight the remainder of the main card, which can be seen on Showtime at 10 p.m. EDT/PDT. Souza, who lost his middleweight title to Luke Rockhold last year, could move back into title contention with a win over Brunson (9-1). The main card also features welterweights Tarec Saffiedine vs. Roger Bowling, middleweights Lumumba Sayers vs. Anthony Smith and light heavyweights Ovince St. Preux vs. T.J. Cook.
The preliminaries, which can be seen on Showtime Extreme at 8 p.m. EDT/PDT, includes: bantamweights Miesha Tate vs. Julie Kedzie; lightweights Bobby Green vs. Matt Ricehouse; middleweights Adlan Amagov vs. Keith Berry; and bantamweights Hiroko Yamanaka vs. Germaine de Randamie.
DISPUTED FINISH:
Although Benson Henderson successfully defended his UFC lightweight championship in the main event of UFC 150 against Frankie Edgar, the decision was roundly criticized.
Many in the crowd at Denver’s Pepsi Center thought Edgar won the bout.
“It’s one of those controversial decisions,” UFC president Dana White says. “Let me say this. I’m not a judge. I’m not a judge. Ben Henderson won the fight (Saturday night). He retained his title. That’s the end of it. I know there were a lot of people who scored the fight differently, but I tell these guys all the time, ‘If you don’t like the way the judges score, don’t let it get there.’”
Edgar won 49-46 on one scorecard, and Henderson won 48-47 on the other two.
“I thought that I was ahead,” Henderson says. “I thought that, maybe at worst, it was even and I had to win the fifth round. I have the exact same sentiments as Mr. White. You can’t leave it in the judges’ decisions. You guys have seen some very suspect judges’ decisions. So anytime you leave it in a judge’s decision, you never know. You never know. As close as our fight was, I just knew that I had to get after it in that fifth round and go get him.”
Henderson will now face top contender Nate Diaz. Edgar, who held the lightweight title from April of 2010 through February of this year, may drop to featherweight.
