[adventured]

So your theory is that men are not almost always substantially stronger than women pound for pound?

It's not a bias, it's extremely well understood human physiology. Men and women are in fact very different in the strength department, men are vastly stronger.

[michaelchisari]

The problem with saying "men are stronger than women" is that we're not dealing with men and women, we're dealing with a specific woman, and a potential specific man.

This is not about the aggregate, it's about the specific.

I would put Rhonda's ground game up against plenty of bantamweight men. Striking is a different story, of course, but god help any fighter that hesitates and lets her attach on to anything. Watch her spar with Uriah Hall, and how easily she takes down an extremely athletic man with a 50 pound advantage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yYZfeDm_Ig

I don't think this fight would ever happen, but dismissing Rhonda Rouseys potential with biological hand-waving is an insult to everything she's accomplished. And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't even particularly like her.

[mod]

In other cases, when talking about specific individuals--in particular, Olympic weightlifting record-holders--the gender difference is still very obvious.

[michaelchisari]

MMA is extremely multi-faceted compared to weightlifting. There's a reason the Gracies dominated the sport for so long, and it had nothing to do with any kind of extraordinary upper body strength.