> Why? I thought the whole reason men tend to be stronger is that we're generally physically larger. As in more pounds of muscle to be strong with.
No, a 180 pound man would absolutely destroy a 180 woman. It's just the way it is. To a large extent it's because the only weight in your body that's doing 'work' are your muscles, and women biologically have higher body fat percentages than men, including in top trained athletes in weight-division based sports. That difference can be quite substantial depending on the sport and the level. For normal people the average difference is about 11% (and you wouldn't see it, either, a man at 12% bodyfat looks very similar to a woman at say 18 or 20%) Meaning for a say a 180 pound individual at a 10% differential in bodyfat percentage, we're looking at a difference of 18 pounds of muscle. That's multiple weight divisions, a huge difference in division based sports like most martial arts. In other words you can have more muscle while being the same weight. A lot of this has to do with different steroid hormonal levels, like testosterone, and genetics, which dictate the ability and propensity to build muscle and store fat, which differ quite significantly between sexes.
Beyond that there are differences in hand-eye coordination between men and women, which I don't know exist for top athletes (although looking at women in sports like football or boxing that I know pretty well, it's often considerably worse with all due respect, so I'd assume technically there is a difference, too in general, although there are exceptions), and then there's aerobic fitness related things where men have better oxygen uptake, bodyweight adjusted, too, more hemoglobin mass etc.
But yeah outside of sports, a lot of it is weight based. You simply won't find guys the size of Valuev or Anthony Joshua in the opposite gender.
Anyway the whole 'beat a man' thing with Ronda is just marketing. The fact we're talking about this is exactly what it gets her: a ton of exposure even on platforms totally non-fighting related. Everyone within their own sport knows how big the gap is. She's sparred with tons of guys and has experienced getting toyed with. And that is true for many other sports. Some women have tried in various sports, tennis being the most common one, where you ended up with the nr 1 woman in the world not being able to win a single set against her brother who plays for recreation at college level. In fighting we've had Dutch pride Lucia Rijker, one of the greatest female fighters of all time, undefeated, actually trains Ronda in her striking, and she got knocked out unconscious by a complete and utter nobody easily and quickly, she never tried again.