Ladies and gentlemen, step right this way to an event that can both knock your teeth out and knock your socks off. I’m talking the real grit: the first women’s mixed martial arts match ever for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
This ain’t your bikini mud wrestling or lingerie league, folks. Mixed martial arts was once called “human cockfighting” for a reason. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is full of fights that leave prized fighters broken, unconscious or bloody, but that has never stopped people from paying to see it.
Stepping into the arena we have Liz Carmouche, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran who takes down her opponents with a vicious rear choke. She is up to give Ronda Rousey, the touted industry favorite, a run for her money. Rousey is an Olympic bronze medalist in judo who has reigned undefeated since the start of her mixed martial arts days.
With a face that could break men’s hearts and a signature armbar that can break their backs, Rousey has put the Ultimate Fighting Championship into a media frenzy as it calls her the first female Ultimate Fighting Championship superstar.
So, here is the part that turns this match from a publicity gimmick into a regular event for the Ultimate Fighting Championship: Would you pay to see it?
So far, the consensus seems to be yes. Rousey against Carmouche packed a full house, and the sports reporters all seemed to agree it was a good fight that lived up to the publicity hype.
The real unsung hero out of this entire event, other than the fighters, is Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. White once famously said there would never be a women’s mixed martial arts match allowed in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but the story goes that all of that changed once he met Ronda Rousey.
With a rock-solid confidence in Rousey as a fighter, White then promoted the first women’s Ultimate Fighting Championship title match and watched as his golden girl put Carmouche into an armbar hold until she tapped out.
All of this sounds like a Lifetime story about how some corporate mega-lord had a change of heart and helped lead a historical change to a brutally competitive sport, but really, it was a story about money, and that just makes it better.
White’s opposition to a women’s Ultimate Fighting Championship fight wasn’t based on misogyny but on profit. He simply didn’t believe anyone would pay to see two women fight. But with the rise of women mixed martial arts fighters in the 2000s, White understood this was a cash cow that couldn’t be ignored.
Despite his bold claims that women would never fight in the cage, White was negotiating years ago to bring fighter Gina Carano into the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but it never panned out. White saw you need more than just one superstar to make something like a women’s division legitimate, so I think he has been biding his time until more women mixed martial arts fighters were fierce competitors until he unleashed a full women’s title match to the Ultimate Fighting Championship audiences.
White then publicly announced his “change of heart” to the media in order to generate publicity and more ticket sales for the upcoming Rousey against Carmouche fight. He promoted the fight as the main title fight, and fans were welcome to pay an arm and a leg on pay-per-view to watch “history being made.”
Some might call White an opportunist looking to make a buck, but, to be honest, thank God he played it the way he did. If women’s matches in the big league are a step forward for women in mixed martial arts and people will also pay to see it, then that alone will push forward its acceptance all that much faster.
At the end of the day, we see two types of people that the world can’t live without: businessmen willing to take a risk and women ready to step up to a fight.
Lauren Flannery is a business administration sophomore at UF. Her column usually runs on Tuesdays. You can contact her via opinions@alligator.org.
