Beatdown

So what are we to make of Holly Holm beating up the allegedly unbeatup-able Ronda Rousey, and doing it with unbecoming ease?

Well, first of all, the worst part of it was that somewhere Floyd Mayweather was likely doing this.

Anyone with an ounce of decency hates the idea of a woman-beating punk like Mayweather getting the last laugh at any time, but especially at the expense of a woman. The best that can be said of it is that Rousey set herself up for it by claiming she could beat Mayweather in a fight, a plainly absurd notion that ignored what got exposed for all the world to see Saturday night.

Which is, overwhelming as she is when she gets someone on the mat, she's easy pickings for an accomplished boxer.

That was Holm's background and that's why she knocked Rousey cold, and didn't really break much of a sweat doing it. And so one shudders at what would happen if Rousey actually did get in a ring with Mayweather, perhaps the greatest pound-for-pound boxer in the world. The suspicion before Saturday was that she'd last until Floyd landed a punch. That suspicion is far more than that now.

Plainly speaking she was at a loss against someone who could stick and move, not all that shocking considering Rousey's background is mostly judo and wrestling. She's not great against someone who knows how to land a punch. And Holm knew how to land a punch.

It's something all of us (me included) overlooked as we watched Rousey ho-hum her way to one victory after another. In that regard, it very much reminded you of another titanic pugilistic upset, in which a journeyman named Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson one night. As with Rousey, we we were all so entranced by Tyson's utter dominance of a landscape of tomato cans we failed to take into consideration what would happen if someone actually hit Iron Mike back.

What happened was, he went down and out. As did Rousey. And once again we were reminded of the thing that makes sports great: No one is indestructible. Everyone goes down eventually.