Dana White: ‘Ronda Rousey is underrated’

Ronda Rousey has been called a lot of things, but we don't know if we've ever heard someone refer to her as underrated. But that's exactly what UFC president Dana White called her during an appearance on the ‘Pardon My Sports’ podcast (via Yahoo! Sports).

“She's underrated,” he said. “Look at what she did. Look at what she built. She started it all."

Underrated certainly wouldn't be the word we'd use. Through her reign of destruction, Rousey was lauded by MMA fans and the mainstream media as a once in history kind of fighter. Reporters asked her if she could defeat heavyweight Cain Velasquez or boxing great Floyd Mayweather and not only did she say yes, but people believed her!

But perhaps he's talking about the way people have turned on her since her last two losses. Her striking has never been very good, but it was good enough to get her to the clinch where she used her Olympic caliber judo to finish fighters quickly. But she wasn't able to adapt once the women at 135 pounds figured out her game, and now she's no longer getting the credit she once did for her amazing run.

"You had such a dominant female fighter," White continued. "She was so bad ass and she spoke well and she was pretty. That whole combination of what she was built that whole female mixed martial arts phenomenon. She was the right person at the right time to do it.”

White's right on this: without Ronda Rousey, none of that would have happened. And it's not really fair that her accomplishments are overlooked because of those two bad losses. You don't discount Royce Gracie because he was eventually exposed as one dimensional. So why is everyone so quick to crap on Rousey?