Does former UFC champion Ronda Rousey get enough, too much or just the right amount of credit for her accomplishments and impact on MMA? Was Brian Ortega really unconscious for 30 whole minutes during his weight cut for UFC Shanghai? And what are we supposed to think when Dana White’s Contender Series fighters are offering to suck toes for a UFC contract?

All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @benfowlkesmma.

@DangerBrooks: I saw that Ronda Rousey said people were too quick to forget her contributions to MMA. Did we really forget, or were those contributions exaggerated in the first place?

I think it could be both. There may very well be a segment of the current MMA fandom that wasn’t around for Ronda Rousey’s peak and so doesn’t realize what a genuine star she was. As in, right now the UFC does not have a single fighter — male or female — who sells pay-per-views like she did. She was legitimately huge for the sport, and especially for the women’s side of it.

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But also? Some of her quotes at times make me wonder if she also forgets the extent to which other female pioneers in MMA paved the way for her. Rousey didn’t have her first amateur fight until 2010. By then there was an entire fully formed sport for her to join. Strikeforce had its first women’s fight in 2006. HOOKnSHOOT had done all-women fight cards even before then. It’s true that Rousey was the fighter and the personality that got White and the UFC to finally change their no-girls-allowed stance, but they were extremely late to the party on that in 2013.

Rousey’s stardom did a lot to elevate women’s MMA to new levels, and also to inspire a new generation of female fighters to get into MMA. But she never would have had the chance to do any of that if a lot of fighters and promoters and matchmakers hadn’t been pushing it for years before she ever put on a pair of gloves.

@Paquet90: Favorite Bearjew Moment

I don’t know if there’s a win that’s aged better than his last-second (literally) submission win over Magomed Ankalaev. That’s the moment where Paul Craig became a known man in the UFC. Ankalaev, of course, went on to become UFC light heavyweight champ. As of now, that loss to Craig is the only defeat on his record. And it came in the very last second of the last round of a fight Craig was losing — a fight Craig has said repeatedly over the years would’ve led to his early MMA retirement had he actually lost. If that happened in a movie, you’d roll your eyes at how unrealistic it was.

@ewillcock: After ‘fat boy’ offering to suck Dana White’s toes for a contract after his win on the contender series tonight, what is your favorite memory of a public request for a bonus/ fight/ contact?

Maybe I’m alone in this, but it’s hard for me to feel too great about it when fighters have to beg Dana White for a contract or a bonus. Just seems … icky. Even when we’re not talking about sucking toes. It gives off a real trying-to-gain-the-favor-of-the-emperor vibe. And the whole idea behind Dana White’s Contender Series is already pretty heavily tilted toward pleasing one specific person whose name is on the thing.

@Beastin364: Brian Ortega says he was unconscious for 30 minutes after passing out mid weight cut. 30 minutes! Bruh how’d they let him fight after that

I really hope he’s exaggerating, because 30 minutes is a really, really long time to be lying there unconscious. Especially during the rigors of a weight cut? If you’re one of his coaches and you’re dumping ice on him trying to bring him around and he still won’t wake up and a full half-hour has passed, I think that’s where you start to freak all the way out. To go get on the scale after that and then fight five full rounds the next day? That’s the really crazy part to me.

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It does, however, raise some questions about who’s keeping an eye on things when the UFC is doing events in places like Shanghai. In a lot of places with actual functioning athletic commissions, a trip to the hospital just before weigh-ins is a real dealbreaker. Imagine what an awful look it would have been for the UFC if something terrible had happened to Ortega in the fight after all that. It’s not like we haven’t seen scenarios exactly like that elsewhere in MMA.

@WorldsWorstHero: Just read that Jones article you wrote. Good stuff! Is there anyone else in MMA who tried to portray a particular image but just ended up being viewed as the total opposite?

Tito Ortiz. There was a time when he really seemed to want us to think of him as the smartest, savviest fighter out there. That’s, uh, not really the way it all worked out, though.

@SpicySpic69: Is the contender series the worst thing to happen to the UFC recently? The bloated roster is mostly to blame for a decline in card quality

I think you have the cause and effect backward. DWCS is there because the UFC wanted cheap, easy content that could also funnel developing talent into the UFC at rock-bottom prices. Basically another version of “The Ultimate Fighter,” but one that can do the same work quicker and without the need for an entire season of reality TV that hardly anyone watches anymore.

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The frantic UFC event schedule is what dictated the need for more warm bodies to fill out these cards. But why go around individually scooping up free agent fighters when you can turn that process into content while also getting them all at entry-level contract prices?

Also, the UFC views this as a chance to scoop up a bunch of penny stocks. Most of them won’t amount to much, which is fine, because they didn’t cost much to procure and they filled a need on two separate tiers of UFC programming. Some of them do turn out to be really good. UFC champions have come from that show. And, again, they come cheap.

As a mid-week MMA offering, I actually like the show. You get some good fights and don’t have to sit through all the stale reality TV stuff that “TUF” serves up. The only thing that annoys me is the vague, shifting requirements to earn a contract. That’s ostensibly the whole point of the show, is impressing White enough to get signed. But some weeks that seems easier than others. Some weeks they’ll bring on these 35-year-old fighters and then White will tell them that he’s not looking for 35-year-old fighters. That’s essentially telling them that they were only there to lose, and the fact that they won instead still means nothing.

I also think there’s a conversation to be had about how DWCS has reshaped the overall MMA ecosystem. I even wrote a story about that last year. One thing I heard from regional promoters was that DWCS has changed the way talent develops and flows upward in this sport. But even there I think the cause and effect might be more complicated than it initially appears.