Women and fighting are two things most men love. What you get when you combine the two is the newest fad in the fastest growing sport in the world.
More and more women are starting to compete in mixed martial arts, which is great for the sport, helping it diversify and expand into new markets. It just needed a marketable face to represent the sport and grab the fans attention. Well, it finally has that in the form of Ronda Rousey.
Women’s MMA first became popular with the rise of American Gladiator Gina Carano in the mid-2000s. She was the poster girl for women’s MMA with her large size, strength and looks, but it was short lived; she decided to act full-time after losing an MMA fight. Still, her skills in the cage were shown to be less than stellar when fighting better competition and she could never live up to the immeasurable hype.
The sport would never be taken seriously if it couldn’t establish legitimacy and credibility. Christine “Cyborg” Santos, the woman who beat Carano, was thought to be
the next big thing, but she tested positive for steroids, ending that dream. It was a dark time for the sport and could have destroyed women’s MMA.
The solution finally came in the form of an American fighter who took home the bronze medal in judo at the 2008 Beijing games. Ronda Rousey, the first and current UFC women’s bantamweight champion, was looking for a new challenge after taking a year off from judo. She left her bartending job and decided to put her cap in the ring and give MMA a try.
It worked. She went 6-0 in her first six professional fights, winning them all by arm-bar submission in the first round. That put her on notice as a fighter to watch, because she was not only winning fights but finishing them, and that’s what fans want to see. True MMA fans had to respect the talent they were witnessing and could not deny female fighters the respect they deserved.
Women’s MMA finally hit legitimacy and mainstream popularity in late 2012, when UFC President Dana White, who once said women would never fight in the UFC, signed Rousey as the first UFC women’s champion, along with a dozen other female fighters. This launched a massive press tour, sending Rousey on numerous photo shoots and magazine and television interviews around the country.
White soon made Rousey the main attraction of a UFC pay-per-view event in February 2013. Rousey won that fight the same way she had won her previous six. She is the real deal and not a flash in the
pan like Carano and Santos were. She is now the face of women’s MMA and someone the company and sport can admire.
Rousey and her next opponent, Meisha Tate, are coaching on this season of “The “Ultimate Fighter,” UFC’s reality competition show that offers a six-figure contract to the winner. The show airs on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Fox Sports 1. “The Ultimate Fighter” has launched many UFC fighters’ careers — not just the winners’ careers.
This year is the first time female fighters are competing on the show, which helps to promote and popularize the sport even more. So far this season, the most enjoyable fights have been the women’s. I hope this is only the beginning for women’s MMA and MMA as a whole.
