When I was in Montreal White didn’t mention he was against females fighting, in fact he gave the impression that he was all for it. He did say that the UFC doesn’t have women fighting because he didn’t feel there were enough skilled fighters to continue to create compelling matches on a regular basis.

I’m all for women fighting, in fact they regularly put on matches that are more exciting than men. I watched this Rose/Couture fight on YouTube and it should have been stopped after the first round, Couture was hurt and to me it looked like her corner should have thrown in the towel. YMMV

You know, call me p.c. or whatever, but this is a terrible double standard. We can respect men when they have battle scars, but lament that it will make a woman less “pretty”? Isn’t there more to being a woman – and especially, to being a woman who fights – than appearance? I couldn’t care less how attractive a female fighter is, or a male fighter, for that matter, because I’m not watching either of them in a fashion show or thinking about picking them up in a bar. I’m watching them fight, and that means there’s a chance they’ll take a beating, but it’s a risk they’ve decided to take to try and achieve a victory in a test of strength and skill. I respect them for that.

And frankly, fuck EXC and everyone else who markets the shit out of Carano because she’s eye candy. There are other women who are just as tough/skilled but have a different look (naturally, not from fighting), and they get held back because of the way people treat Carano due to her appearance. That’s bullshit too.

Boy, I’m just pissed at everything this morning.

I KNOW that it’s smart business by EXC, but it also hurts the legitimacy of women doing MMA in the long run. Because people end up focused on the fighters’ looks, we constantly end up coming back to the “But if they keep fighting, they won’t be pretty” point of view. A woman who competes in pro MMA for a long time is going to get scars, probably a cauliflower ear, maybe a crooked nose. None of these things are a problem for a male fighter because they aren’t marketed on their looks; for a female fighter, they’re thrown out there as a reason why they shouldn’t fight (or the fights shouldn’t be shown; or promoters should just stick to marketing attractive fighters with a likely correspondingly short shelf life; or…). I don’t think EXC did anything that every other promotion wouldn’t do too; but that still doesn’t mean it’s good for the careers of the growing number of women fighters out there.

Ultimately, I just still can’t understand how people can have such a negative reaction to watching women throw down when they don’t have that reaction for men, or justify marketing a fighter party (Gina Carano) or solely (Ginele Marquez) based on looks when the same is rarely if ever done for the other gender. It just seems like an outdated, knee-jerk reaction, and as a society, we’re supposed to be past that. Even if I’m wrong, I don’t think I can ever get my head around the other point of view.

Maybe it’s just cause I get front row seats for my wife kicking the shit out of me on a daily basis, so a woman kicking ass just doesn’t seem so strange…

It’s not a mistake not to include women’s mma. I’d be pissed if I ordered a PPV and it wasted space with women fighting.