It's funny the difference a few months and couple armbars can make.

It wasn't so long ago that UFC President Dana White routinely shot down the idea of a women's division in the UFC on the grounds that there simply weren't enough good female fighters out there.

Now he tells SI.com that it's "absolutely going to happen" whether it happens tomorrow or a year from now.

If you didn't know better, you might wonder if the ranks of women's MMA hadn't swelled with talent overnight. Again, that's only if you didn't know better, and that if you didn't know that when White talks about the inevitability of a women's division, he's mostly talking about one fighter. And one fighter, no matter how great she is, does not make a division. That's kind of been White's whole point all along, or at least I thought it was.

If you haven't noticed, the UFC president is a bit of a Ronda Rousey fan. Why wouldn't he be? As former Strikeforce champ Sarah Kaufman put it before getting her crack at Rousey in August, a beautiful blond submissions wiz with an Olympic medal and a penchant for headline-grabbing sound bites is the kind of asset any fight promoter would like to have. Rousey is the kind of fighter who "makes Dana's job easier," Kaufman said before getting her own arm yanked on by the current Strikeforce 135-pound women's champ.

Kaufman was right then, and she's right now. If you're White, and you're trying to find a reason why you should even attempt to sell women's MMA to your existing audience, you can't do much better than Rousey. She's a one-in-a-million mix of arm-snapping ability, red-carpet looks and TMZ-worthy charisma. Fighters like that just don't come along every day.

But then, isn't that also part of the problem? Isn't that the reason why White was hesitant to get into the women's MMA business before now - because there aren't enough Rouseys out there?

That's what White's always said anyway, and if that's his concern, then he has every reason to still be concerned about it. The women's 135-pound division is just as thin now as it was this time last year. Remember back in August, when White had begun to warm to the idea of women's MMA but admitted that the only fighters he could name were Rousey and Miesha Tate? It's not as if the landscape has changed all that much since then. It's still Rousey at the top and then everybody else fighting for the scraps below her. You've still got fighters such as Kaufman and Julie Kedzie and Liz Carmouche banging around in the lineup, but if they weren't enough to constitute a UFC-worthy division before, why now?

Maybe it's the promise of a mega-fight between Rousey and former Strikeforce 145-pound champ Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos that changed White's maybe to an absolutely. Maybe it's just a natural evolution in his thinking that's been sped up by spending so much time around Rousey recently. It's possible that the success of Invicta FC's women-only approach to MMA has even had a little something to do with it. Still, even if the UFC does manage to put together a money-making bout between Rousey and Santos - which is its own little migraine, what with the Strikeforce/Showtime situation and the disparity in weight between the two women - it's not as if that will instantly alter the landscape for women in MMA.

That's because there's only so much you can do with just one fight. We've tried that approach before with women's MMA. Santos and Gina Carano fought in the main event on Showtime more than three years ago, and the best thing to come of it was a memorable beatdown by Santos and a brand new acting career for Carano. A UFC fight with Santos might get Rousey her own reality TV show, but I doubt it will result in the sudden creation of a full-fledged women's division capable of putting on regular fights inside the octagon.

But maybe that's not what White means when he says women will absolutely fight in the UFC. Maybe what he means is that women who are either named Ronda Rousey or happen to be matched up against her on that particular night will fight in the UFC, and everyone else will carry on as usual.

I hope that's not it. I hope that when White says he's "committed to this," the "this" is a division rather than a fighter. I hope he sees the possibility in other weight classes, such as 125 pounds, where there are more fighters to choose from and more talent waiting to be discovered. I hope we're not just talking about ways to bring the Ronda show to the UFC - since that show could always get canceled with a couple losses, an injury or a change in priorities.

As we've seen, one fighter doesn't make a division. Hell, one fighter doesn't even make a fight. The success White has had in this business proves he knows that. Let's just hope he doesn't forget it here.

USA Today