Strikeforce

Without a doubt Ronda Rousey is the face of women's MMA at this day and age. She has inherited that honor from Gina Carano, who these days finds herself involved more in Hollywood than in the cage.

Since winning the Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Championship, Rousey has garnered all sorts of hype from fans, fighters and media alike. Her 5-0 record with five first-round armbars definitely proves that she is talented and dangerous.

Adding to her hype are her promotional abilities, stunning looks and acid tongue. She has been able to attract all sorts of media attention, from TMZ to ESPN.

But, has Rousey been overhyped to this point?

One could argue that she has been, considering that she has only five wins. The only fight which carries any weight on her record is the one with Miesha Tate. 

Of course that is all arguable.

Also, some fans will argue that what is barring Rousey from being what she is hyped to be is a fight with Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos. Santos, who is currently serving a suspension for doping, was considered the top dog in the WMMA world.

Santos possesses a game that could rival that of Rousey. Her standup is lethal, and her grappling is game as well.

Until then, Rousey will be the top dog—that is, if she is able to defeat Sarah Kaufman tonight.

Getting to Rousey's being overhyped, I really do not believe she is. Women's MMA, being as shallow in talent as it is, does not have many stars.

Rousey is the star of WMMA, and for good reason. She talks the talk and walks the walk.

Therefore, she has not been overhyped.

Miesha Tate has gone from headlining a Strikeforce card to a spot on Saturday's undercard. Since her loss to Ronda Rousey in her latest bout and the loss of her championship belt, Tate has been enamored with the thought of a rematch with the submission ace.

Take, for instance, her thoughts on coaching an all-women's Ultimate Fighter season across from Rousey:

I love it. I think that would be the fight to put on if they were going to do that. It doesn’t get any better than Ronda and I; two ladies who honestly have a rival between each other.”

I think it would be a huge selling point and a huge hit. Ronda knows how to talk trash, and hype things and whatnot, and I’d just be keeping it cool and have fun. I think we play well off of each other. 

Out of any women’s mixed martial arts fight that’s happened before, we set the bar higher. I think there wouldn’t be two better females to host an Ultimate Fighting reality show.

Although this isn't a big deal, it is just one of many examples of Miesha Tate having too much focus on Rousey.

Saturday night, Tate meets an underrated Julie Kedzie. A solid striker, Kedzie has a great chance of scoring an upset, especially if Tate is looking past her. Kedzie is a Greg Jackson-trained fighter, which means she is going to come into this fight prepared and with a good game plan. 

From watching the weigh-ins, it looks like Tate is a little too relaxed for this fight. It is as if she thinks this fight is not a big deal and she is banking on a meeting with Rousey.

This is not the right mindset.

Obviously, the loss of her championship belt is something that understandably is going to divert her attention. But the best way for her to get a shot at closure is to be 100 percent focused on her opponent, who has more than a good chance of beating her.

Come fight night, if Tate comes in unprepared, over-relaxed and with her mind elsewhere, she is going to struggle.

Hopefully, her focus on Rousey is making her more prepared than ever. That way, we can see another fun fight between Tate and Rousey.

Strikeforce’s main event on Saturday night, Ronda “Rowdy” Rousey vs. Sarah Kaufman, is set to take place at 10 p.m. ET.

The Bantamweight Championship is on the line and this will be the first defense of Rousey’s reign as the champ since she submitted Miesha Tate in Columbus last March. Both Kaufman and Rousey have similar builds, with Rousey holding a one-inch reach advantage.

The hype around this fight has reached a pinnacle and the two women are ready to let their fighting do the talking.

Where: Valley View Casino Center, San Diego, California

When: Saturday, August 18 at 8 p.m. ET

Main Event Start Time: 10 p.m. ET

TV: Showtime

Odds: 1-to-8 in favor of Rousey, Kaufman is 5-to-1 (Bovada)

Rousey will have her hands full as she is taking on one of the best and most experienced 135-pound women currently fighting in Strikeforce. Kaufman has been participating in mixed martial arts for over 10 years.

Let’s take a look at how these two stack up against each other before weighing in on a prediction.

Fightmetric.com lists Kaufman’s take down defense as 86 percent, and she’s going to need to improve on that if she hopes to leave San Diego as the bantamweight champion.

Kaufman will have to stretch the fight out and use that to her advantage. Rousey wins quick fights, averaging a fight length of 1:23, while Kaufman’s fights have averaged over 13 minutes.

“Rowdy” needs to fight to her strengths, keeping Kaufman on the mat and not on the offensive. Kaufman is averaging 6.43 strikes landed per minute in comparison to Rousey’s 1.63. By keeping Kaufman horizontal, she can control the pace of the fight and cripple Kaufman’s strength at the same time.

If she can control the fight and utilize her judo to get Kaufman to the mat, Rousey's ability to finish things with her elite arm bar is second-to-none.

This fight is actually very predictable. Kaufman needs to avoid the take-down at all costs. She isn’t severely at a disadvantage due to reach, but it will be an issue for her as Rousey will be continually attempting to take her down.

Prediction: Rousey by arm bar in Round 2.

Follow me on Twitter @BigHoagowski

It's an indisputable fact that Strikeforce women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is MMA's newest star of the moment.

In the five months since defeating Miesha Tate for the championship, she's modeled in ESPN The Magazine's "Body Issue," appeared on Conan O'Brien's TBS talk show and had her own Showtime All Access special.

She's also become well-known in the blogosphere for her controversial comments about reality star Kim Kardashian and swimmer Michael Phelps.

Rousey's brashness and champion status has made her easily the most famous woman in MMA since Gina Carano, who was widely recognized as the "First Lady" of the sport.

And considering the UFC is on a bit of a down stretch in the national spectrum, Rousey may be the most recognizable face in the sport.

Don't get it twisted, though. Her fame level isn't simply because she's aesthetically pleasing.

A bronze medalist in judo from 2008's Beijing Summer Olympics, Rousey is not only undefeated in each of her five professional bouts, but she's been absolutely dominant. The 25-year-old has not allowed an opponent out of the first round, submitting each with relative ease.

But as she prepares for her first title defense against Sarah Kaufman on Saturday, Aug. 18 (10 p.m. EDT on Showtime), Rousey needs to have one thing on her mind: pure dominance.

Though Kaufman is no slouch, entering Saturday's match with a record of 15-1 and a place in history as Strikeforce's first bantamweight champion, the 26-year-old is undoubtedly a massive underdog. The folks over at Bovada.lv have Kaufman at +400 while marking up Rousey to a -700 favorite—and those odds are probably a little kind.

Rousey grapples with the power of someone twice her 135-pound frame, likely making Kaufman overpowered from the start.

With that in mind, if Rousey wants to continue her meteoric rise to fame and not become another flash in the pan of MMA's trash heap, she needs to repeat her past performances and submit Kaufman in the first round.

The stardom levels of MMAers is constantly fleeting. Ask Kimbo Slice or Ms. Carano herself about how quickly it all can go away.

If Rousey struggles or Kaufman pulls the unthinkable upset, the Venice, Calif. native will instantly descend out of the national spotlight and into relative obscurity.

But if she beats down Kaufman like she has her past opponents, Rousey could set up a main event against Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos and continue her rise to superstardom.

Strikeforce's Rousey vs. Kaufman event on Aug. 18 will mark yet another monumental moment in women's mixed martial arts as the top two 135-pound women headline a major Zuffa card on Showtime. 

Not only is the card pretty stacked for a Strikeforce event, but the main event between Ronda Rousey and Sarah Kaufman will be historic as it is the first title defense of Rousey's reign as the women's bantamweight champion. 

After weeks of trash talk and speculation on whether she even deserved the title shot in the first place, Rousey won the belt back in March when she defeated then-champion Miesha Tate late in the first round of their contest. 

Since then, Rousey has seen her popularity skyrocket to levels that not even she could have imagined.

As the new "face" of women's MMA, Rousey has been getting lots of attention from reporters, Zuffa executives including Dana White and sponsors—she even found herself on the cover of ESPN The Magazine's "Body Issue" wearing nothing but her birthday suit.

From the hunter to the hunted, Rousey now finds herself looking down at a long list of challengers, the first of which she will meet on Saturday night as she battles Sarah Kaufman.

One would assume that after achieving her goal of being the champion, Rousey would be focused on retaining her title. Yet in recent days, we've seen her become increasingly interested in another potential challenger—the currently suspended Strikeforce women's featherweight champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos. 

After Cyborg called Rousey out at a weight higher than 135 pounds, Rousey responded on TSN Radio's The MMA Report with John Pollack. 

"She’s never had a fair fight in her life and I see how the prospect of that would scare the hell out of her and why she would insist at fighting heavier," Rousey said, referring to Santos' suspension due to a positive steroid test. "She's completely defamed, and anything she’s ever done is nothing because she is a big old cheater and she's been doping her whole life."

Then during Friday's weigh-ins, things got even more awkward when Cyborg opted to attend, stand up during the Rousey vs. Kaufman photos and wave at her foe.

To her credit, Rousey didn't seen intimidated by the featherweight champion, but based on her comments, there's no doubt that she's already looking past Sarah Kaufman and toward Cyborg.

While Rousey may very well be the best 135-pound female fighter in the world today, her challenger is no slouch.

Kaufman's 15-1 record includes victories over the likes of Shayna Baszler, Liz Carmouche, Alexis Davis (twice) and even Miesha Tate. Needless to say, the former bantamweight champion is looking to get the title back that she believes is rightfully hers. 

Rousey looking past Kaufman could prove to be her downfall on Saturday night. We all know that the former Olympic judo medalist is capable of submitting anyone at any time, but Sarah Kaufman boasts an 86 percent takedown defense in her past seven fights (according to FightMetric).

She has also consistently battered her opponents on the feet. If Rousey can't bring the fight to the ground, she could be in for very long night.

The odds are still in favor of Rousey to walk out of San Diego with the bantamweight title still around her waist, but if she truly is more worried about Cyborg than the challenger in front of her, Rousey's reign will be short-lived. 

There's no question that, like Chael Sonnen, Ronda Rousey knows her way around a microphone. 

She's good at building up fights, plain and simple. Her trash-talking ways are responsible—even more so than her awesome fighting skills and her beauty—for her meteoric rise to the top of mixed martial arts. It was just March 2011 that she made her professional debut, and just over a year later she's the Strikeforce bantamweight champion and a media darling. 

But lately, it feels like Rousey is going overboard. That was certainly the case at Thursday's pre-fight press conference in San Diego, where she unleashed the following gem:

If I get her in an armbar, I'm going to try to rip it off and throw it at her corner...If I get her in a choke, I'm going to hold onto it until she's actually dead. And if I get a knockout, I'm going to go all the way. I'm going to try to pound her face into the ground and she's depending on the competence of the California (State) Athletic Commission to walk out of that cage alive.

Look, I'm fine with a little trash-talking. We don't get a ton of it in the sport, so it's a refreshing change of pace when it does happen. I'd prefer that it developed naturally instead of being forced, but I'll take what I can get.

But there is a line, and saying you're planning to kill your opponent is close to it. But I can understand the situation, what with the heat of the moment and all that jazz. But going into explicit detail about how you plan on doing it, like Rousey did? That's crossing the line. No question about it.

I'm sure you remember the time Frank Mir said he planned on making Brock Lesnar the first fighter to die from Octagon-related injuries. That one didn't go over too well with the brass at Zuffa. Mir was forced to apologize for the comment, and Dana White publicly scolded Mir as well.

I don't know if anyone at Zuffa took Rousey aside and told her to chill out. If they didn't, they probably should. Build up a fight all you want, but don't wish death on your opponent. That's asking for trouble, and it doesn't exactly reflect well on the company you work for or the sport as a whole.

Rousey has it all: the skills, the looks and the promotional talent. She's a goldmine. But stuff like this will turn off fans even as she attempts to earn new ones.

Ronda Rousey isn't your typical female MMA fighter.

The Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Champion not only shines while she's fighting, but in the public eye as well.

She's modeled for ESPN The Magazine's Body Issue. She's a noted detester of Kim Kardashian, something she made known on the red carpet at the ESPYs.

Rousey is just a different character on the MMA scene.

Many female fighters just go about their business, training for their fights and coming out on fight night to put on a show for the fans. That isn't what Rousey is all about, but it is what her next opponent, Sarah Kaufman, lives by.

Kaufman doesn't involve herself in trash talking. She's all about what she can do in the Octagon.

Not only are the two polar opposites outside of the Octagon, they are completely different fighters inside of it.

Rousey is a submission specialist. She has won each of her five professional MMA fights via submission my armbar, including this incredibly gruesome one against Miesha Tate.

Kaufman doesn't mess around with submission moves. She just likes to go right at her opponents and whale on them until the ref calls the fight or they are unconscious.

The British Columbia native has compiled a record of 15-1 over the last six-plus years. Kaufman has knocked out 10 of her opponents, something that Rousey should definitely take note of before she steps into the Octagon.

There is only one blemish on Kaufman's record, and it came in the form of an armbar submission at the hands of Marloes Coenen. In case you forgot what you just read, Rousey is absolutely lethal with an armbar.

From what I can tell, Rousey loves to talk trash. She went at Kardashian on the red carpet like she goes after her opponents before and during her matches. She's relentless in her trash talking, and it has paid off thus far.

Kaufman, on the other hand, isn't much of a talker. She uses her fists of fury to speak for her.

It is always intriguing to watch a submission-heavy fighter go up against a knockout-heavy fighter. It allows spectators to see which fighter is truly better at their craft.

No matter who comes out on top in San Diego, Calif. on Aug. 18, the match is sure to blow the doors off the place.