Holly Holm Just Taught The World, And Ronda Rousey, Something About Internet Haters

Holly Holm has taught the world and her one-time opponent Ronda Rousey a very important thing about the nature of internet haters.

In the aftermath of UFC 193, Twitter particularly received a lot of criticism for the way it went after Rousey — “it” being the collective users, not the actual company.

Memes were flying left and right showing Holly Holm dominating Ronda in sometimes hilarious and often degrading ways. As if that wasn’t enough, many people were leaving comments on Rousey’s Twitter and Instagram accounts (where she is much more active) celebrating the fall of an MMA titan.

During the melee, the narrative started circulating that people “love to watch someone fall” or enjoy “piling on.” While there may be a certain degree of truth to that, Holly Holm has just thrown a monkey wrench into the perspective with how she handled her own defeat to Miesha Tate at UFC 196.

After fighting a cerebral fight in which she won three of five rounds and over half of another, Holly got caught in Miesha’s constrictor-like choke. Despite being absolutely helpless, she refused to tap out and even went to sleep throwing punches in the air.

It was a heroic way to lose, and while it did play into the considerably kinder reception she has since received on social media, it was her actions post-fight that spared her the “Ronda Rousey treatment” of merciless mockery.

Just what did Holly Holm do differently?

Firstly, Holm didn’t hide from the public.

Rousey hid behind a split lip and refused to attend the press conference after her knockout loss to Holm in November 2015 despite the fact, as we would later find out, she was fine enough to attend.

It wasn’t until Thanksgiving a couple of weeks later that Rousey willingly showed her face again, and it was even longer than that before she would open up about the loss to ESPN Magazine.

Still, that was an interview for print. It did not require her to make a public appearance. That wouldn’t come until an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in February, where Rousey went so far as to say that she contemplated suicide — after one loss.

Rather than the requisite sympathy she was hoping for, it launched a new string of attacks that caused the former UFC champ to hit Instagram with a pointed message for her haters.

Secondly, Ronda displayed the classic “sore winner” syndrome.

Rousey had an easy time being gracious to certain opponents as long as she was winning, but too often, she would gloat about her dominance in “Iron” Mike Tyson fashion in spite of the fact that she had only a third of the victories in her career that Tyson enjoyed before suffering his first loss.

An “Iron Mike” Rousey was not. She was a talented fighter and an impressive athlete in a very young division. When faced with an opponent who was completely unintimidated, Holly Holm, she was picked apart and put down.

And how did she approach Holly before that fight? She came after her at the pre-fight presser, calling her a “fake-a** b***h” in spite of the fact that she had never even spoken to Holly for longer than five minutes. She also refused to touch gloves as a sign of disrespect prior to Round 1 of their fight.

Rousey cast herself as a villain and welcomed the abuse she would receive whenever someone finally did dethrone her. That dethroning just came a lot earlier than anticipated.

Finally, Holly Holm showed that even haters respect you when you act respectable.

The onslaught against Holm has been pretty much nonexistent. The Instagram post below, in which she congratulates Miesha — after doing so in public, face-to-face, immediately following the fight — earned her tons of “respect” posts in spite of the fact that she was choked unconscious.

And therein lies the lesson about haters.

Yes, they love to kick you while you’re down if you invite that abuse on yourself. But when you face the music and have respect for yourself, they tend to forget what they hate you for, and they move on to the next person worthy of ire.

Ronda Rousey is not the victim of internet haters. She is a person who painted a large target on her back.

If she had learned from Holly Holm before getting blitzed by her, the loss at UFC 193 would have been much less traumatic, and we’d now be talking about her comeback more than her probable retirement.

But what do you think, readers? Did the way Holly Holm handled her loss hurt Ronda’s legacy even more than beating her? Sound off in the comments section below.

[Image via Holly Holm Facebook]