One Woman's View of Women's MMA

Event recapped by Dave Meltzer:

Welcome to our live coverage of the Strikeforce Challengers Series event at the San Jose Civic Auditorium.

The event is sold out, the people standing everywhere in a 2,500 seat arena.

….

Underwhelming night to be sure.

Scores were all 50-45 for Kaufman.

Maybe 300 people were left for the announcement of the winner.

There’s a few at the top who will pretty much squash anyone that gets put in front of them. The rest of the women are really just competing at the bottom of the heap. It’s not competitive. That’s not to say there are some compelling match-ups. It’s just that beyond the handful, who cares?

Women’s MMA in terms of a technical sport is where men’s MMA was about a decade ago: there aren’t enough fighters to consistently make compelling match-ups; records don’t tell you a thing about skills; and fighters are constantly being jerked around and bouncing from promotion to promotion. The only problem is that they’re doing it at a time when so much more is expected from the sport, by both the fans and by the promoters looking to make money off of their fights.

Women’s MMA in terms of a cultural, social phenomenon is always going to be much more stigmatized than men’s MMA; I absolutely understand how people can be bothered by seeing two women hit each other, but I also think it’s kind of a cop-out. Once two people are in the ring/cage together, fighting, I couldn’t care less what their gender or sex is; all I care about is a compelling, competitive match-up.

isn’t that painting women’s MMA with a pretty broad brush??

The equivalent of a non-MMA fan judging MMA by oh lets say Severn vs. Shamrock II or Shields vs. Miller

&

Pick another one sided beating we recently saw … lol cant think of any off the top of my head….

That woman is purely jealous of Gina, and even admits it.

I don’t see any reason why women’s MMA couldn’t eventually rise to the point of being a viable spectator sport, but it’s just not there yet. That problem is compounded by the lack of women involved in amateur boxing and wrestling — two major feeders for professional fighters. Until the amateur development catches up, the professional product will continue to be crappy. Right now there just aren’t enough viable female contenders — in any weight class — to make professional womens MMA interesting.

Ugh.

If you knew anything about WMMA, you would know that Gina fought plenty of girls her own size. Kobold, Maxwell, Pestova, etc…

Why don’t you create an article about how Cyborg beats up little Japanese girls? HMMMMM?

People should be looking at it more like a new weightclass (or in this case, weightclasses), than thinking of it like a separate league, or even sport.

Women’s MMA haven’t been around that long, so naturally, like the UFC’s 155lb division before, and the current 125lb division in MMA, there just isn’t as much top talent yet to fill out the entire division. They already have their Jens Pulver’s, but there arent much talent yet, because naturally, like the 155 and 125 lb division, it’s going to take some time before it develops fully.

So for me, comparing women’s mma to men’s mma as a whole is truly unfair, and that shouldn’t be made, when it is actually more comparable to a developing weightclass.

As I said earlier, they already have Gina, Cyborg, and even Megumi, as their pillars and their top stars. And much like what the first lightweight stars in the UFC had, the huge burden rests on their shoulders to further develop and inspire more people to compete, so that they’d have a deeper and more dynamic talent pool.

There just isn’t enough top quality female fighters. They should be building up on smaller shows, then bring some bigger fights to the big stage when it’s deserving.

For instance, we could, at great expense, make sure that all restrooms for women and men were equipped in exactly the same way. So, women’s restrooms would all have urinals, just like men’s do. This would not be expensive and stupid.

The best thing that people who enjoy women’s mma can do is try to push for the women’s fights to go back to three minute rounds, and not be longer than three rounds.

If the fights had been three rounds at three minutes each, what would peoples’ opinions be of Kaufman/Hayashi, Cyborg/Carano, and Cyborg/Coenan? In all three cases, the fights probably would have been more exciting, and the winner probably wouldn’t have changed. The first round of Kaufman/Hayashi was pretty good. The two Cyborg fights would probably have “almost gone the distance”, but with less time, both fights would have featured more aggression.

In order for women’s mma to be successful, the talent pool needs to deepen. If female fighters can’t make much money fighting, that’s going to be a tough road to travel. If female mma doesn’t have more fans, the fighters aren’t going to make more money. Shortening the fights is one way to make them more likely to be exciting, and may make them more competitive as well.

When women’s fights were shorter, it used to be common-place for people to say, “the women’s fight is often the most exciting fight of the night.” That almost never gets said now.

And why were the fights lengthened? After which women’s mma battle was there a big outcry because people were saying, “if only the fight had lasted longer, we would have really found out who the better fighter was?”

The shallow talent pool in women’s mma makes it almost impossible to make a competitive fight between two women who are genuinely in the same weight class. Pound for pound, I’m not convinced Cyborg is better than Coenan. But once the fight starts, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that, within three minutes, it was clear who the better fighter was.

As long as its possible to figure out within two or three minutes who the better fighter is, there is no reason for five minute rounds, or five round fights. Saying that female mixed martial artists “should” fight five minute rounds “just like the men” is as misguided an attempt at equality as saying than female public restrooms “should” be equipped with urinals “just like the mens”.

In order for female mma to become more popular, it must become more competitive. And in order for it to become more competitive, it needs to become more popular. Thus, at this stage, exciting fights should be the primary goal. That means, first of all, shorten the fights.

Let’s be honest. Strikeforce Challengers VI as a whole was awful. Absolutely awful. Aside from Luke Rockhold finishing off Bradley, I wasn’t impressed at all. Even Medeiros was somewhat underwhelming in my mind. Quick jab, but he seriously couldn’t finish Castillo?

First of all I HATE it when people bring up the WNBA. It’s irrelevant! I think men’s golf is boring but it’s not going to make me stop watching football. Two different sports….

A lot of people are misinformed. There are tons of talented women in the 135lb division.
Strifeforce is doing a poor job of marketing them. Having said this, there’s a 135lb tourney which is being stretched out over the next few months but it’s been farmed out.
The winner of that tourney gets a shot at Sarah Kaufman.

I wouldn’t judge women’s mma based on two fights, it’s not fair. If you look at anything on the surface most likely you will miss a lot of gems…dig deeper!