Remember when fans used to sit around and try to figure out the holy grail of subjective rankings? You know what I'm talking about - the pound-for-pound list. If it wasn't hard enough before now though, a female superstar has made it even more difficult. And that lady would be Ronda Rousey. Trying to compare men across weight classes is one thing, but how about comparing across genders?
Well, there is one female fighter out there that believes Rousey, and women in general, shouldn't be ranked alongside men in a P4P list. That would be Jessica Eye, who is angling for a shot at Rousey's title. In an interview with Rick Lee, she gave her opinion on the subject (transcription via David St. Martin of MMA Fighting):
"Listen, I am 100 percent sold on the fact that this sport, as a female, I don't ever want to do it without the men. I don't ever want the men to feel like we're in competition with them. It's kind of a hard situation when you ask those pound for pounds."
"I don't think the women should be in the pound-for-pound [rankings]. I really don't. I think we should be in our own division, pound-for-pound."
She also believes that she wouldn't be able to hang with her male counterparts:
I can train with them and compete with them but no, man," Eye said. "They're men. Come on. Let's not screw up what we know already. Men have testosterone. I go with these 125ers and these guys are fast. If they really wanted to put it on me, they would put it on us. I think they are kind of losing sight of what we already know and that's that they're men.
"They have testosterone. We're women. We have estrogen. There's that difference. If guys want to put it on us and beat us up they can. Come on now. Who we kidding?"
Eye (11-2) is coming off a win over Leslie Smith in November, and stated in the interview that she will be at South by Southwest with Rousey and UFC president Dana White over the weekend. Could they work out a title fight while they're all together? We'll see.
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