Christiane “Cyborg” Santos is on an eight-fight winning streak and plans to take down Marloes Coenen in Miami this weekend just as quickly as she took down Gina Carano in San Jose last August. Cyborg has an incredible strike game (look for one-hit knockout power) and you can expect her to dominate on the ground. Coenen is no slouch on the mat either; her armbar on Roxanne Modafferi in November (see video below) was no fluke.
This is going to be an awesome match-up, and I plan to be glued to Strikeforce’s Showtime stream this weekend making sure I get to see every second. I’ll be tuning in this Saturday, January 30th at 10 pm ET on sports.sho.com or EASportsMMA.com or wherever I can get the channel for the livestream.
Currently I’m favoring Marloes Coenen (17-3) over Cyborg (8-1), but this is going to be such a good match that I’m hesitant to declare loyalty one way or the other. But I will anyway; I like to cheer for the underdog.
Here’s the broadcast card:
Championship: Nick Diaz vs. Marius Zaromskis
Championship: Cristiane Santos vs. Marloes Coenen Melvin Manhoef vs. Robbie Lawler Herschel Walker vs. Greg Nagy Bobby Lashley vs. Wes Sims
I only began blogging women’s boxing news midway through this year, but what a year it has been. In addition to seeing my first women’s fights on-site, online, and via pay-per-view, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the undisciplined proliferation of boxing’s governing bodies, the heart of some of the world’s most dedicated female boxers, and the frustrating battle women fighters have to get fights and be seen.
Here’s my take on the top four historic moments in women’s boxing in 2009.
1. Women’s Boxing Admitted to 2012 Olympic Games
While big names like Pacqiao and Mayweather kept men’s boxing in the online conversation during 2009, women’s boxing finally got a search spike with the August 13th announcement from International Olympic Committee chair Jacques Rogge telling the world that the 2012 London Olympics will be the first to feature women competing in every single sport including the last holdout, boxing. Hopefully that landmark decision will hold tight, given massive shortfalls in budget funding for the program.
2. Women head a major MMA fight card for the first time in history
This is not boxing, but in my opinion it accomplished a great deal for women’s fight sports by bringing Gina “Conviction” Carano and Cris “Cyborg” Santos together as the first women in MMA history to headline a major MMA fight card. The fight was short but it delivered power, excitement, and a new reigning queen to women’s world-class MMA. It doesn’t matter that Dana White behaves like such an ass with regard to women’s fight sports, forward-thinking businesses like Strikeforce and CBS (who televised the fight) are on board.
3. Lucia Rijker becomes first woman inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame
Undefeated boxer Lucia Rijker (17-0, 14 KOs) achieved this singular honor partly be being a phenomenal boxer, and partly because she is one of the first to retire from the sport since women’s boxing began to win sanctioning. Let’s hope the other main boxing HOF, the International Boxing Hall of Fame, follows suit.
4. Christy Martin pushes record of wins to 49 Christy Martin (49-5-3) has been a mainstay of women’s boxing for more years and more fights than most other female boxers in the sport. In a world where it is so much harder for women to secure fights, Martin has continued to find, fight, and win them in unforgettable crowd-pleasing style. For win number 49, which was quietly conducted with almost no press coverage, Martin took the title despite a tenth-round broken hand. Although there was initial speculation that she would hang up the gloves, rumors in the women’s boxing world once more include the possibility of the push for a 50th win.
I encourage everyone who is interested in daily news about women’s boxing — both amateur and professional — to check in regularly with WBAN, the only major source of online news in this area that I’ve come across. I wish less of their content were hidden behind a paywall, but there are still plenty of stories freely accessible. Beyond that, it’s a hard task to find news, stories, or information online (or anywhere) that consistently tells the story of the women who box. Here’s to positive change in the years ahead.
Next up: a post on the top pro boxing women to watch in 2010…
Big Wonderful Note: Here’s a shout out to Tim Starks over at The Queensberry Rules, which is one of the best men’s pro boxing blogs out there. We spoke on Twitter about wrapping up the year in boxing, and he offered to run my women’s post in addition to some of the great posts he and his readership whipped up covering the men’s side of things. If you love boxing, you should get over toTQBR stat.
Cris Cyborg Santos is an incredible MMA fighter who replacedGina Carano as the top woman in the cage in ’09. Now she will defend her title against the very skilled Marloes Coenen in a Strikeforce fight scheduled for January 30th. This fight is expected to once again catapult women’s fight sports — and MMA in particular — to the forefront of the nation’s attention.
And now Sherdog reports that Cyborg is considering posing for Playboy.
Ugh, I hate this.
Women’s fight sports have had an uphill battle on their hands to gain any kind of serious and official attention in the past 20 years. Women boxers have only had official sanction since the 90’s (and just this year gained admittance to the 2012 Olympics and celebrated the first woman ever inducted to the Boxing Hall of Fame), and female MMA fighters as well as boxers have struggled mightily against the sexist, misogynistic influence of fight sport leaders like Dana White.
While posing naked for Playboy will certainly bring media attention to women’s fight sports, it brings the wrong kind of attention.
We don’t need for the top women fighters in the world to be thought of primarily as objects of sexual fantasy; this makes it just that much easier to dismiss them as minor players — trivial creatures rather than real women who have spent years of hard work and discipline on their sport.
What would be better is more promoters ready to put women on their fight cards, more media outlets ready and willing to cover and broadcast women’s fights (thank you, Showtime), and more event hosts who enable fans to create and share their own media (I HATE the no photos, no video policies at so many fights).
Cyborg: For the sake of women fighters everywhere, please, please say “No” to Playboy. And keep kicking ass in the cage. You are an incredible fighter, and that’s how the world should know and remember you.
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.
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?
This week Strikeforce finally announced the title bout women’s MMA fans have been waiting for: champion Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos (8-1) will follow up on her August 2009 TKO of Gina Carano with a match on January 30, 2010, according to MMA Junkie.
It’s expected that her opponent will be Marloes Coenen (17-3), who recently defeated Roxanne Modafferi (13-5) in the first 63 seconds of a match on the Strikeforce Fedor vs Rogers card in early November.
Brazilian fighter Cyborg has been out of the cage since the Carano match, recovering from a shoulder injury.
I’m still annoyed that CBS didn’t give airtime to the Coenen – Modafferi fight, but I’m hopeful that we’ll get to see the January match. C’mon, Strikeforce, affirm Coenen and let us watch it!
Yes, she’s a beast in the MMA cage, even with her recent loss in a Strikeforce title fight with Cris Cyborg Santos last month. Yes, she’s undeniably gorgeous. But I’m gonna hold back judgment on whether sticking her in a Steven Soderbergh movie is going to be good or bad for women’s fighting.
Word is the new movie will be called “Knockout,” a spy-thriller with Carano as the troubled tough girl needing a second chance to prove herself. A sort of Eight Mile meets James Bond, channeling Charlie’s Angels? Hm. But it’s financed (Relativity media), scripted (Lem Dobbs), has distribution deals (Lionsgate), and is scheduled to begin production in January of 2010, so we’re surely going to find out.
It’s not Carano’s first brush with media by any means. She was in the documentary “Ring Girls,” NBC’s “American Gladiators,” and also played a part in the upcoming action film “Blood and Bone.” And of course her killer good looks have won her plenty of magazine acreage, not to mention press coverage. It’s not just her deadly Muy Thai skills that make people want to see her in a bikini.
I don’t know. I’m not opposed to her foray into big production movies, I’m just wondering if this will give people yet another chance to devalue the hard work and dedication it takes to make it as a professional female fighter. On the other hand, it could bring more attention to MMA as a sport with real celebrities and feminine role models.
The “Muy Thai Machine” and “Baddest Woman South of the Equator” Cris Cyborg Santos definitely earned her title in the single round she fought with reigning favorite Gina Carano.
Cyborg is known as an explosive, powerful fighter with perhaps less technical control and ability than Carano, and this proved accurate in the Strikeforce fight. I think Gina wanted to play a longer game; draw out the fight for more rounds, but she didn’t take advantage of at least one major opportunity to return massive fire from a dominant position in that first and only round, instead getting up to draw Cyborg into a stand up fight. Carano’s standing game looks very good, but Cyborg was having none of it, and made four take down attempts to Carano’s zero, and was successful in two of them.
The last was the fateful one; Cyborg got on top and although Carano had leverage against the cage for a little while, she lost that and Cyborg began raining power rights against Gina’s face, almost none of which were blocked or defended. I counted 13 driving rights to the face in a row before the ref shouldered Cyborg off and called the fight as the horn to end the round sounded.
Initially I felt bad for Carano, who I think would have gone a second round with Cyborg, but after seeing the damage on her face (while Cyborg’s face looked untouched) I wondered. Gina just didn’t have the same kind of almost manic energy Cris was putting out there. This wasn’t her game, and in order to win I think Carano needed to stop thinking about going distance, and instead think about punching some of the wind out of Cyborg’s sails. Easy for me to say, of course.
Still, it was an incredible match, and the eyes of the world will be on Cyborg to see what she does next.
Gina Carano and Cris Cyborg Santos stripped to their underwear and stepped onto the scales for a standing-room only crowd at the San Hose Marriot last night; Carano with an easy, almost embarassed smile and Cyborg with her customary scowl. Bothfighters have been the cause of abundant speculation and buzz, having failed to make weight repeatedly on recent fights. But this time both Carano and Cyborg were right on target, Carano coming in at 143 and Cyborg at 144.5.
I need just a moment to comment. (I posted the picture that I’m seeing EVERYwhere — it’s Showtime’s image and I have no idea how to get permission to use it, if they ask I’ll take it down, of course.) Would you LOOK at Cyborg’s abs? Is anyone else just a little bit freaked out by this chick? Gina, on the other hand, just looks gorgeous; phenomenally fit but not steroidic. (Did I just invent a word, there?) If I had more complimentary superlatives in my head I’d employ them on Carano’s behalf, but frankly I look at this woman and I’m speechless. Sigh, boxing crush.
At my gym last night all the talk was about the impending Carano Cyborg weigh-in, and about cutting weight. I mostly stood on the fringes of the interesting conversations and gleaned information.
If Carano, for example, had not made weight but Cyborg had, Cyborg’s team would have had the power to request a portion of Carano’s purse for the fight, or even call the fight off completely. One person told me that if the fighter who doesn’t make weight is contending for a title, the current title holder (if that’s who they are fighting) can even agree to fight but not for the title in question. I can totally see how that would piss off the fans who had paid big money to see the fight. So, the ability to cut and/or make weight is important.
Apparently there are two main practices: starve and dehydrate. I can go without food more easily, but the notion of dehydration rather horrifies me because I have extremely low blood pressure, and being low on liquids even for part of a day gives me the faints. But apparently people who employ these practices can cut and recover up to 15 pounds in the space of 24 hours. Yikes. That appears to be why weigh-ins are often scheduled for the day before a fight, rather than immediately prior to the match, so that fighters can recover.
How did we get into this stupid practice? It seems to me that everyone would be healthier if we made weigh-ins an hour before the fight. No one would be dehydrated, exhausted, strained, or faint.
But I seem to be the only one who thinks so.
So. Today Carano and Cyborg are trying to take it easy, fueling back up and mentally preparing themselves for tonight’s fight. No matter who wins, history will be made, as this is the first major MMA fight event with women headlining the card.
Word from my fight team is that it will be extremely short: they think a few minutes at most, with Carano winning in a KO. However, I think Cyborg is too damn tough to go down that quickly. I’m hoping for a little bit more.
I’ll be tuned in, and I’ll try not to phone any of you in the middle of the night to babble excitedly about the results. But if you plan to go to bed early tonight, I recommend you go ahead and turn off your ringer.
This Saturday it happens. Gina “Conviction” Carano (7-0) and Cris “Cyborg” Santos (7-1) will become the first women in MMA history to headline a major MMA fight card. I don’t know if you watch boxing or MMA, but if you watch women’s sports at all this is going to be a groundbreaking event across the board and I plan to put another notch in my lipstick case (*note to self: purchase lipstick and case) for women leading the way.
Oh, and eat light: this is gonna be a brutal fight. Although it’s true that I say that about all MMA fights; they just seem so much less civilized than boxing. To each her own.
If you’re interested in a full write-up of each fighter’s strengths and weaknesses, I recommend the Bleacher Report. And even though most of the news sites I’m following favor Carano, there are also plenty of people betting on Santos, too. I think it will be a good match up.
You may also enjoy this video of Gina training with Norm “Satan” Turner. I found it incredibly inspirational. There’s something you just gotta love about working that hard, training that intensely; it radiates passion and engagement in a way that you don’t see every day. But damn, I hope my own dungeon master — woops, I meant trainer — doesn’t see it. If she does I will know YOU told her and I may have to unfriend you on Facebook. Either that, or I will get in better shape really fast.
