Ronda Rousey's Cover SI-keout

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Ronda Rousey hit newsstands Wednesday, covering the latest edition of Sports Illustrated. The cover headline reads, “Unbreakable: Ronda Rousey is the world's most dominant athlete.”

Ronda Rousey is not the world's most dominant athlete. Fortunately for her, it doesn't even matter: she's the best female fighter in the history of MMA, she's currently the sport's biggest draw and she's simply on another level, all degrees of dominance aside.

There is beaucoup to say to for SI executive editor Jon Wertheim's Rousey cover story, almost the least of which is addressing the bold proclamation in the headline. Sports Illustrated's infamous “cover jinx” and its penchant for hyperbolic assertions have long been part of the journalistic institution's quaint charm. This is a magazine's cover that told you Tony Mandarich was the “greatest offensive line prospect ever” in 1989, that suggested the University of Miami should abandon its football program in 1995, that said the Cubs would win the World Series in 2004 and in 2008, the latter because of Kosuke friggin' Fukudome. While you collect the brain matter dripping from your ear, let me remind you that it's all about selling magazines, especially at a time that print media market continues to shrink.

Leaving aside monolithically, supernaturally skilled players in team sports who can be statistically and competitively quantified as more dominant than their peers, like Michael Jordan then or Lionel Messi now, Rousey doesn't even sniff the realm of transathletic alpha dominance. If we stick to MMA, I'd argue that Jon Jones, Jose Aldo and Demetrious Johnson have all been more dominant in their respective MMA careers, especially given their level of opposition. If we open it up to boxing, surely Floyd Mayweather deserves mention.

The degrees of dominance are even more severe in some other sports: Saori Yoshida and Kaori Icho are the two greatest female wrestlers ever and they're both still active, both going for fourth consecutive Olympic gold medals. Yoshida is the most decorated freestyle wrestler in history, of either gender, and has lost literally two matches at the international senior level. Icho is amidst a 153-match winning streak. Speaking of Japan, Kohei Uchimura is arguably the greatest male gymnast ever and he's just 26 years old, with five Olympic medals and five consecutive World all-around titles. Malaysia's Nicol David has been the top women's squash player for eight years running and Austria's Marcel Hirscher has been the top men's skier for four years running with four straight World Cup titles. Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt still exist.

But, Wertheim doesn't double down on pushing the “most dominant” agenda in his piece. Instead, he offers a well-written and thoughtful profile on Rousey that functions brilliantly for SI's readership. A hardcore MMA fan familiar with Rousey's backstory, accomplishments and narratives isn't going to learn much, apart from the Olympic bronze medalist's disgusting penchant for a cocktail comprised of raspberry and lemon vodkas, simple syrup and Chambord. Sports Illustrated is considered “legacy media” for a reason, and part of that is its ongoing ability to resound with an older, or at least casually interested sports fan. For an average sports consumer or person only tangentially aware of Rousey, Wertheim paints a vivid and genuine portrait of the woman, aside from the passing suggestion of her unparalleled dominance.

But again, it's not about whether or not Rousey is really the most dominant damn dominator on the whole darn Earth. To sit around a) weakly trying to prop that argument up or b) breathlessly yelling about how Rousey's being meager competition misses the importance of the SI cover entirely.

There has never been a mixed martial artist as an SI cover athlete before. You might be keen to point out Roger Huerta teeping Leonard Garcia in the face on the May 28, 2007 edition, but the cover story, also written by Wertheim, was about the UFC's explosion in popularity and financial success, with UFC 69 as a backdrop. Huerta was a benefactor of circumstance, the right kick at the right time against, certainly, the right opponent.

In April 1957, infinite badass Dan Hodge became the only amateur wrestler to ever cover SI. Boxing covers were a staple up until the mid-1990's, including Christy Martin's April 1996 cover, making her the first female fighter on the front gloss. But since 1998, SI has only indulged boxing twice, first with a May 2007 cover dedicated to Floyd Mayweather-Oscar de la Hoya, followed recently by the dual covers for Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao. That is, unless you include Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale promoting “The Fighter.”

Plain and simple, fighters don't make it on to the cover of Sports Illustrated any more with the full takeout feature treatment and certainly not women. More importantly, Rousey's cover is different from even her female predecessor: Christy Martin was a flash in the pan and a non-draw who fell off her perch not long after, despite a miserably anemic talent pool for women's boxing. Martin's ballyhooed December 2002 bout with Playboy centerfold Mia St. John inside the cavernous Pontiac Silverdome drew somewhere between 300 and 500 people -- yes, you're reading that correctly. Rousey is an infinitely more achieved fighter and just did over 600,000 PPV buys against Cat Zingano. Again, there is a difference.

Wertheim isn't some MMA new jack; he wrote the fantastic “Blood in the Cage,” exploring the sport and the career of Pat Miletich and he even chaired an MMA analytics panel I was on at 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. But even in his position as SI's executive editor, he's still in charge with curating content for a magazine that aims for the widest possible sports audience. Rousey sells.

In April, I flew home to Halifax to visit my parents for my father's birthday. Considering my father probably catches a UFC card or two per year by accident, I thought it was strange when he began asking me a battery of questions about Ronda Rousey. Over the next two days, I realized that my 55-year-old father, who has never given a damn about MMA over my 16 years of fandom, is completely enamored with Rousey, as an athlete and as a concept. His PC desktop background was Rousey in ESPN The Magazine's “The Body Issue.” He had so many questions; after all, the only “Rowdy” fight he'd ever seen was her demolition of Zingano. He was positively incredulous watching a highlight of hers on YouTube.

While I was forced to reconcile the fact my pops is a bit of a sexist perv in the process, it was a clue-in that casual stick-and-ball sports fans just like him are yet another demographic that Rousey draws in. Ronda Rousey is probably the best chance you have to get your 60-year-old parents and six-year-old daughter to watch a fight with you, together, happily, for all 30 seconds or less.

You, the seasoned MMA fan who is dropping hot takes on the Sherdog forum or r/MMA, may have any number of wildly different opinions about Rousey on a personal level, and that's kosher. Regardless of your feelings, however, her she distills brilliantly in the mainstream media situations. She cleans up brilliantly for print ads. She's bright and engaging on late-night television. She goes on Howard Stern and nails it, effortlessly playing conversational tennis with the king of shock jockery, navigating repartee about full-facial farting and pubic hair. She's jocular without being raunchy, she's candid without trying too hard to impress. It's no surprise Dana White chose her to contrast with Jon Jones when publicly discussing Jones' failure in learning how to successfully play the game of sports superstardom. “The face of women's MMA” has come a long way from Gina Carano giggling and biting her lip while looking like a deer in headlights.

Rousey's future is uncertain. Is there enough talent for her to stick around for the long haul in the UFC? How does Hollywood and shooting movies impact her schedule going forward, if at all? Do we ever get a fight with “Cyborg” Cristiane Justino? Will the non-traditional consumers responsible for making her a bona fide sports star continue to buy her fights on PPV, considering that a constituent part of her persona is humiliating her opposition in mere seconds?

I don't know any of that, but I do know that in this moment, she's MMA's foremost superstar, transcending the sport while simultaneously drawing the attention of sports fans, non-sports fans and media that are seldom stimulated by prizefights. Hell, if the biggest knock on Rousey and women's MMA on the whole is its lack of depth, Rousey's continuted dominance and celebrity are the best possible future antidote.; no other athlete is more likely to inspire a young woman to put a pair of four-ounce gloves on.

She's not the most dominant athlete alive, but it doesn't matter. It wasn't Saori Yoshida that was front and center at Wrestlemania, it was Ronda Rousey. And she's not even a wrestler.