stopped me at just a semi

I would be remiss if I did not point out the use of shadowing and strategic camera angles to obscure Meisha’s face, as opposed to a full frontal shot of Ronda’s face and her greater camera time in relative terms. Translation – Showtime knows a butterface when it sees one.

Early clinch, Ronda with the takedown, fakes the transition to armbar, brutal ground and pound finish. About 32 seconds.

1)That ad was less offensive than I expected (Yay?), but the general direction showtime has been going with this is still fairly disturbing. Unfortunately, when your target audience is 18-35 year old men wearing __________ (fill in the blank with random MMA t-shirt brand) T-shirts to BW3, marketing women’s MMA athletes as sexual objects is likely to generate more cash than the much more obvious method of marketing them as MMA athletes. I’m not sure what my overriding point is here short of “We sure have a fucked-up way of treating women.” Sex has always sold, I don’t really have a problem with female fighters using their looks to push themselves or their sport, I just hate the fact that we operate in a system where they are more or less forced to do so, and where promoters (see basically the entire history of women’s J-MMA) push them to sell that way.

2)I tend to think it’s a bad idea to highlight the word “Kill” when you’re trying to sell MMA. Obviously, it’s just a turn of phrase, but this is the sort of stuff promoters need to be cognoscente of when you’re trying to push a violent, controversial sport into the mainstream.

3)I really hope this fight turns into fireworks, and pushes women’s MMA, MMA on showtime, and MMA in general up a rung.

demographic of MMA. But the sex appeal goes both ways. Men want to be the GSP’s and Jon Jone’s and their girlfriends want to do them. Men want to do the Meisha Tates and Rhona Rousey’s and their girlfriends want to be them.