Skip straight to 4:25 on this video to hear the shocking part.
Dana White is lighting up a tiny bit of press (why not a helluva lot more??) with his recent answer to the question: “Do you think you’ll do a female season of Ultimate Fighter?”
“Here’s the thing,” Dana says, and we all wait expectantly. “The problem is there’s not enough good girls to fight in the division, okay?”
At this point I have a WTF kind of look on my face. It’s easy to imagine if you try.
“It’s probably gonna be a while before that happens,” he says, and then he drops an even bigger bomb. “It’s the same thing with boxing. Even when women’s boxing was big you had three or four girls who were really good and a lot of girls that weren’t.”
Go ahead and set your phasers on stun, and let’s put him out of our misery.
“I sound like I’m sexist or something,” he comments, and I think, No. You sound like you’re dumber than a rock.
Dana went on to day that he’d actually seen a “girl fight” once (Wow, really, Dana? You mean you’re not just making wild guesses about the lack of women in fight sports?) between a “really pretty, beautiful girl” and one “who looked exactly like Randy Couture.” And it was a beatdown, and he “doesn’t like even thinking about it.”
Golly, we all feel sorry for you now. Having to think about that scary bad fight.
“So that’s my story,” he finishes lamely, “on women’s MMA.”
What an ass.
Do you remember (November 1989) when Pat Robertson made this comment: “The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There’s never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I’ll buy some of the feminism.”
Yeah. At the time there were two female Grand Masters in chess, and since then there’ve been several more.
So, in order to assist Dana White with his…problem, Savage Science helpfully published a list of 32 top women MMA fighters in the 145 weight category (candidates to fight Gina Carano).
Now this is only a handful of the women in that one weight category, but guess what, Dana? There are other weight categories in women’s MMA. Amazing news for you, I know.
Do you need someone to determine which ones are “really pretty” too, or can you handle that part?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t know how to say this without sending sexist, so I want everyone to know I am not sexist. I think there is a time and place for male and female sports and you just need to find the right crowd to market it too.
There just isn’t enough interest in women’s MMA. I am a member of a lot of forums and the majority of members are “hardcore fans” and 99% of them are men. Of all those “hardcore mma fans” most of them just don’t care to see two women go at it. While MMA has a lot of o female fans who might like to see it, the majority is still male. The males are who the UFC is targeting and like I said from what I can tell most don’t want to see women fight.
Another thing, and this is where I might sound sexist, is that women fight like women. There are very few female MMA fighters who “fight like men” which makes it more exciting to the predominantly male audience. The best example is Chistine Santos – she fights like a man. She is ruthless with her punches when she gets ahold of you. If more women fought like her it MIGHT stand more of a chance. Gina Corano on the other hand fights like a woman and was popular and drove the crowd because she had a lot of hype around her and she was nice to look at – I know that’s sad.
If they tried to push female MMA hard in the UFC I believe it would fail. I believe in time we’ll see a women’s fight in the UFC, but I doubt it will ever get a strong push or become a pillar of the company.
Keith, thanks for reading and commenting. I think you and I are talking about several different issues here.
One is whether or not there is money to be made in promoting women’s MMA. Strikeforce has already proven that they can make money doing it (Carano v Cyborg), and they’re ready to try it again as they put together the January 30 Cyborg v Coenen show, which will be aired by CBS once again. So, is there a viable business model in women’s MMA? So far there is, whether or not Dana White is ready to try it out.
Dana’s assertion that there aren’t more than 3 or 4 “good” women fighters is simply untrue, both for MMA and boxing. Anyone who follows these sports can rattle off twenty top women they watch, just like any fan. Just because Dana doesn’t follow these women doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
The issue of who populates the (male) MMA forums is another thing completely. I’m not surprised to see that most of the existing MMA forums cover primarily male fighters, the articles are written mostly by men, and the forum participants are men. And frankly, I’ve looked around in those forums when a women’s bout is on the list and the behavior is appalling. So many men react to women fighters by seeing them as sex objects, or by being violently dismissive (one guy left a comment recently that he’d rather “jack off with sandpaper” than have to watch a women’s match; his was only one in a sea of similar comments in that forum), that it’s no wonder to me that fans of women’s MMA don’t hang out there. Why would we want to? But again, the fact that women’s MMA fans aren’t on the predominantly male forums doesn’t mean that we don’t exist.
It doesn’t surprise me that women fight like… women. They are women. Why would we try to fight like men? Men have that covered. I wouldn’t say Cyborg (or Carano) fights like a man. They are both women. You may just be saying that Cyborg fights like a man because she won, but I would disagree. It was a bout with two women, and just like in every single men’s bout, one person wins and one loses. That’s how it works.
I’ll be okay with it if the UFC doesn’t ever start a women’s division. Maybe that will spring up in some other place where it won’t have to limp along under Dana White’s misogynistic headship. I would rather see it rise up among leaders who enjoy and appreciate women’s MMA.
Wow! Some great reading here.. book marking this blog for a time in the next few days when I’m much less stressed (and/or buzzed) for further reading and debate.. [ i spent an hour writing and re-writing what originally occupied this space and decided to not to post it.. just yet.. ] btw, this is deep.. nice upper cut.. IMHO..
So, mostly what I came up with was a bunch of questions. I ran them past one of the guys at work who is far more in tune with sports than I am and used several different sports as examples. Some of the answers made sense and seemed obvious, though not necessarily fair or politically correct. The questions I had were:
Can men and women fairly compete against each other?
Should women be allowed to compete in any sport (against men) if they so choose, or do they need to be “protected”?
Why was Title IX necessary in the first place?
Why are “women’s versions” of sports not as “popular”?
Are the majority of sports fans male or female?
If they (fans) are mostly male, then why do they prefer watching other males?
Is the divide between the two sexes any more different than if compared to a professional level and semi-professional level of a particular sport?
My coworker answered them as best he could and basically stated that there were some sports where women could compete equally and fairly with men (nascar, chess, etc.) When I asked him about golf he felt that even golf was too strenuous for women (as a whole) to compete with men. As far as Title IX goes he acknowledged that women get the short end of the stick, but didn’t feel like it was necessarily a form of discrimination, but instead a reflection of the “popularity” side of the equation (and thus a form of de facto descrimination). The popularity issue he said was one of “quality” and “level” of competition and that by nature men would always when out when it came down to press, coverage and sponsorship (money) – using the “farm team” vs. “pro level” analogy.
As a perfect example, during last February’s Amgen Tour of California (cycling) inclimate weather delayed the start of one of the races so instead they showed a tape of one of the women’s stages from that same Tour. I was totally shocked. I had no idea there was even a women’s bracket in such races. I know that sounds stupid, since I see women cyclist all the time and I know they race and compete, but the fact they would take part in such a major event and never even be acknowledged just blew me away. It was as if they didn’t even exists. Kind of an “out of sight, out of mind” type of thing. Btw, did you know there was a Women’s Tour de France? I certainly didn’t. I think women will constantly have to fight to raise awareness about their particular sports and their right to exist. Never let your guard down, and keep on roaring…
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