Is Ronda Rousey right about GSP?

As someone who’s gotten in a few heated exchanges and altercations with movie theatre assholes, I can appreciate Ronda Rousey’s story about confronting an Ugg-wearing seat kicker (4:20 mark of the first video).

Rousey, who’s known just as much for her shoot-from-the-lip Chael Sonnen attitude as her four armbar wins in four minutes, will challenge Strikeforce women’s 135-pound champ Miesha Tate on March 3. I just wish she didn’t sound so much like an entitled high schooler when she talks.

She also brings up an interesting if debatable point at the 5:00 mark of the video below when she argues that Nick Diaz beating Georges St. Pierre would be good for the sport:

“It’s not the Olympics. It’s not about just coming home and bringing home a medal, and just having hardware and getting the win. It’s about pulling more fans in, and being entertaining. I think that fighters that just try to win by points and come away with a win are actually bad for the sport. If you never saw MMA before, and you walked in and you saw GSP and Koscheck, and all this jabbing out the whole time, it looks like a boring boxing match. And I don’t think you gain any fans with a fight like that. And so I really hope that Nick Diaz beats the crap out of him, because Nick Diaz is entertaining, and he’s an entertaining character in general. He might not be popular but I mean I can’t help but watch every video he puts out on YouTube. I think it’s funny as hell. And every single one of his fights is a brawl. It’s not like a pitter-pat match where afterwards he goes ‘Were friends, were all friends, buy Gatorade and let’s go home.’ I think that’s boring. GSP was good for the sport for a while. He brought in some big sponsors like Gatorade and UnderArmor. But I think he’s done everything he can in a positive way and he needs to step aside and let Nick Diaz kick his ass.”

She’s not wrong in that it would excite the welterweight division by levelling the playing field a bit. It would make match-ups in the division far more exciting because no longer would fighters be battling to be the next one to lose to the champ. But GSP does more for the sport in terms of attracting new fans and conveying a sense of civility and respectability that it would hurt the sport if he weren’t champion.