What is the Future of Women in MMA?

There’s no denying that mixed martial arts is a man-dominated sport. Men represent the majority of the fans, the fighters and the ownership of MMA-related businesses. The Cyborg/Finney fight at the June 26 Strikeforce event in San Jose California proved that women not only have a role in MMA, but they can be a dominant force.

The first time I saw a professional women’s fight was in 1995 when Christy Martin fought Erica Schmidlin on the Mike Tyson/Buster Mathis Jr. undercard. To borrow a line from Cus D’Amato, she hit with bad intentions. Women had been boxing for years, but I’ll admit I did not pay much attention until I saw Martin fight. I was like a lot of people out there and thought women fighters were just a side show. Martin proved to me that women fighters can be just as brutal as men. I was hopeful that after the Martin/Schmidlin fight, which was the fight of the night, we would see more women featured at top boxing events. The boxing world, however, once again failed the fans by not showing what we wanted.

I think MMA will succeed where boxing failed. I was hoping for a physical and brutal fight from Cyborg and Finney, and they delivered. My only criticism of the fight was the referee waited too long to call the fight. In my opinion, that fight should never had made it into the second round. I’m all for giving fighters every chance to make something happen, but in this case Finney was clearly not fighting back. Finney was outmatched and I think it’s going to be hard for Cyborg to find people who can match her intensity and strength.

I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist (not as bad as Ghetto), and I thought that there might have been some instruction to let the fight go on for as long as possible to give the fans a better look at women MMA fighters. If that was the case, stop it. MMA fans have higher standards and we demand honesty and integrity in our fights. Overall I am excited about the future of women in MMA, but if MMA wants to succeed where boxing failed, women cannot be treated as a sideshow.

On a side note, does Cyborg remind anyone else of Billie the Blue Bear, the former German prostitute who broke Maggie “Mo Chuisle” Fitzgerald’s neck in Million Dollar Baby?

~Tip

Tippy is the Heavy Hands blogger and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .