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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey is featured heavily in an interesting article in ESPN The Magazine's Body Issue this month, discussing the extra issue female athletes have to deal with in order to compete: their breasts.
Rousey herself nearly had a wardrobe malfunction in her UFC debut this February against Liz Carmouche, as the wrong fight-night apparel had been ordered prior to the event, leaving her to fight in a much less fight-friendly thin bra that she used at weigh-ins. When Liz Carmouche was on her back, her top nearly came down, and adjusting it in the middle of the fight also caused her to take an added blow with her focus temporarily off the fight.
"When someone's on your back trying to rip your head off, things tend to slip around a bit," Rousey commented adding that when she shook Carmouche off and could adjust herself, "I got kicked straight in the chest right as I was trying to adjust my bra."
The incident brought about the expected response from the mostly-male MMA audience, but thankfully for Rousey's sake she avoided what she says would have been a "morbidly embarrassing" moment. However, in the mix of a larger, highly interesting narrative, Rousey gave her comments on the issues presented by breasts for female athletes in high-level competition.
"The bigger my chest is, the more it gets in the way," she said, "...it just creates space. It makes me much more efficient if I don't have so much in the way between me and my opponent."
"Gina Carano was an amazing fighter, and she had a fantastic rack," Rousey continued. "[But] you don't see big titties in the Olympics, and I think that's for a reason."
Penick's Analysis: The full article is absolutely worth a read, but obviously given our focus on MMA the Rousey comments were where our focus goes. That was one of the more ill-advised fighting outfits for a female competitor in February, but it's far from the first time it's been an issue. In a sport so grappling-heavy, it's easy for fabric and material in those tops to get shifted around, and that can lead to incidents like Rousey nearly experienced. But it's more than just the fear of wardrobe malfunction that female fighters have to deal with, as they're all contending with different issues depending on the respective size of what they're working with. As the article discusses, there are inherent things that are made difficult or at least more complicated with them in the way, and obviously the distraction presented to Rousey could have gotten her in trouble against Carmouche in February as well. She managed to avoid that, but it's certainly something that all female athletes are dealing with.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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