Two summers ago, a fight between Gina Carano and Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos appeared to answer any questions about the long-term future of women’s mixed martial arts.
A Strikeforce event in San Jose, Calif. on Aug. 15, 2009, advertised as the first time women had ever headlined a combat sport on premium cable, drew 13,524 fans, still the fourth-largest paid crowd for a non-Zuffa produced event in North American history, and largest for any show not headlined by Frank Shamrock.Ratings for the event were through the roof. It is still the highest-rated overall MMA show (a 2.17 rating) and second-highest-rated fight itself (2.91) ever on Showtime, trailing only February’s Fedor Emelianenko-Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva bout. On the night of the fight, Carano-Santos was the most talked about subject on Twitter, the most-searched item on Yahoo! and second-most searched on Google.
Carano-Santos was the culmination of a run, largely based on the popularity of Carano, and the importance of making the right first impression.
Strikeforce was the first major promotion to feature a women’s fight in the U.S., a Carano vs. Elaina Maxwell fight that tore the house down in San Jose in 2006.
When Showtime got into the MMA business in 2007 with Elite XC, its promotional head, Gary Shaw, felt Carano could be one of the company’s building blocks. At the time, as funny as this sounds today, just broadcasting MMA on television was controversial enough, and the idea of women fighting in a cage was something Showtime, at first, wanted no part of, and her fight was scheduled for the untelevised undercard.
Shaw had to beg and plead, and eventually an agreement was made that Carano would get one chance on television. If it didn’t work, Shaw was never to bring up the subject again. Carano and Julie Kedzie stole the show in an emotional three-round fight, and women’s fighting became a fixture everywhere except Zuffa, parent company of the UFC.
Two years later, not only has women’s MMA never come close to the level it reached with Carano vs. “Cyborg,” but a series of events has led to many questions as to its future under the national spotlight.
Three major factors are involved:
• The first and most important was the purchase of Strikeforce on March 10 by Zuffa, the dominant MMA company in the world, and one that has never promoted a women’s fight. UFC president Dana White’s opinion on women’s fighting has evolved over the years. At first, when rival promotions featured women, he responded that he didn’t like the idea of women fighting, and that he didn’t feel like fighting of any kind was a sport for women. As Carano’s fights proved to be big hits with the public on Showtime and CBS, he softened his stance, stating that there were some very good women fighters, but simply not enough of them. The UFC’s model is for a full complement of weight classes separate divisions there aren’t enough quality fighters.
When XC went out of business, Zuffa did try and land Carano, due to her ratings drawing ability, and thus was willing to feature women’s MMA at one point in the since-folded WEC. After Carano went with Strikeforce, there never appeared to be any interest from Zuffa in women’s fighting. Read More
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