She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  The history of MMA is extensive and could be a book on its own, but since the purpose of this volume is to highlight the history of women’s involvement in the sport, it will suffice to say that the significance of MMA is its rapid growth during the past two decades. Since the first UFC event in 1993, MMA has made headlines as the most violent sport in the world. Whether this is true remains to be seen. Injuries in MMA fights may not be any more prevalent than those in boxing, or even American football, but the visual spectacle of a MMA fight appears more violent than other sports.

  One of the reasons MMA appears to be more violent is because of the types of attacks fighters are allowed to execute and the small amount of protective gear fighters don in the cage. In most MMA promotions fighters wear only a mouth guard, a groin protector (for men), and four-ounce gloves. When compared to the ten-ounce gloves in boxing and extensive padding of a professional football player, the paucity of protective gear worn by a MMA fighter seems to invite injury. Furthermore, fighters are able to carry out many more types of attacks than in boxing. Thus, many fighters are injured and sometimes defeated by kicks, knee, or elbow strikes. The submission portion of MMA allows fighters to do joint manipulations that could, and sometimes do, break arms and tear knee or ankle joints. Competitors can choke one another unconscious, which always includes a risk of brain injury. MMA fighters have a higher risk of injury than most athletes because they wear less protective gear and can sustain damage through a variety of submission techniques. Four-ounce gloves and elbow strikes often lead to bloody noses and split eyebrows, so most MMA bouts include some form of bloodshed; however, not all fights end with severe injury, as most end with no more bumps and bruises than a NFL player receives after a hard game. But MMA still contains a connotation of violence and brutality inherent in multidiscipline fight sports.

  Jocelyn Lybarger lands a heavy cross on Rosa Acevedo at RFA 14. Courtesy of Bryan James Carr of Liquid Steel Photogs.

  It is not just violence that makes MMA popular. There are numerous possible outcomes in this multidisciplinary sport, so fights are rarely predictable. Viewers tune in for a variety of reasons, from the violence, to the skill, to the narratives of fighters. Individual fighters draw attention from fans and the sports media industry for being controversial, likeable, or good-looking. Promotional machines advertising fight cards emphasize rivalries and underdog stories, just like any other sport medium. Throughout the past two decades, MMA has become a cultural zeitgeist, creating a new platform for the Pankration, a sport that, by all accounts, appears to have died out thousands of years ago.

  MMA Controversy

  MMA grew swiftly in popularity, although critics like Senator John McCain have denounced the sport as a spectacle of violence, rather than skill. Injunctions against MMA competitions sprung up throughout the United States, as groups from the USA Boxing Commission to state governments sought to eliminate MMA bouts. After its first show in 1993, the UFC promotion offered more frequent events, all of which were available on pay-per-view, occupying the same airwaves as professional boxing. Although the UFC was on its way to becoming a monopoly in the fight world, it still endured numerous roadblocks from opponents of the sport. Officials in Georgia tried to prevent the UFC from holding its twenty-first pay-per-view event in Atlanta in May 1997, because of disagreements regarding licensing.[1] The following month, the Ultimate Fighting Alliance, a now-defunct MMA promotion, agreed to create more stringent rules to govern the cage to position MMA alongside the sports of boxing, judo, and karate.[2] The new regulations, which were also implemented in other MMA venues, included glove size specifications, weight-class divisions, and defining such illegal techniques as groin strikes, hair-pulling, and small-joint manipulations. Even with these modifications, many individuals and groups, USA Boxing, in particular, hoped the sport of MMA would die as quickly as it had meteorically rose.

  Conversely, MMA would prevail over its detractors, becoming the one of the fastest-growing sports in recent history. In the early days, the UFC and PRIDE Fighting Championships, the Japanese equivalent, were televised sporting events held several times per year that featured fighters from throughout the world in various martial art disciplines. But MMA also became popular at the local level; small shows with local fighters were held in dirty bars or amphitheaters in settings reminiscent of an underground fight in a B movie. Fighters would prepare for these events in wrestling schools, karate and tae kwon do dojos, boxing gyms, and kickboxing studios. Local shows would help grow some of the UFC’s greatest fighters, as well as increase the popularity of MMA as a sport and not just a spectacle. MMA allowed fighters to hurt one another with an unprecedented number of techniques. Fighters were no longer constrained to one specific methodology; boxers could go to the ground, wrestlers could kick, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters could punch. And as MMA grew internationally through pay-per-view events featuring such stars as Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, traditional fighting gyms began to offer cross-training opportunities to create well-rounded competitors for this new sport.

  The Origins of Women’s MMA

  Women’s history in MMA has been largely underestimated. Several online articles that claim to outline the history of women’s mixed martial arts (WMMA) begin their timeline as late as 2004 or 2009. Although both years were important for the sport, women participated in the new sport of MMA prior to those dates. While there are many discrepancies in online articles and websites, the website www.Sherdog.com is a fantastic and accurate resource for anyone looking for MMA statistics and past-event information. Nearly all dates, fight records, and statistics in this chapter, unless otherwise stated, are from Sherdog’s website.

  In the early 1990s, Japan had two all-female professional wrestling promotions, both of which added no-holds-barred-style fights to their venues. The first all-female MMA fight card was held in Tokyo in 1995, by the Ladies Legends Professional Wrestling fighting promotion. There were seven bouts on the card featuring fighters from throughout the world. The headline event was between Russian Svetlana Goundarenko, a six-foot, three-inch, 330-pound fighter who retired in 2001, with six wins and two losses, and Shinobu Kandori of Japan, a much smaller opponent, at five feet, seven inches and 165 pounds, with a rear naked choke. The Russian emerged victorious. The women fought again in 1998, but this time Shinobu defeated Svetlana with a submission.

  The next Ladies Legends Pro Wrestling fight card took place in 2000, and included Marloes Coenen in her debut fight, which she won with an arm bar against Yuuki Kondo. The fight venue was reconfigured into Smackgirl, an all-women’s promotion that ran from May 2001 to April 2008, and presented dozens of incredible fight cards in Japan. Women worldwide traveled to participate, including American Laura D’Auguste, who retired in 2008, with nine victories, one draw, and no losses. D’Auguste is a registered nurse who traveled to Japan to compete in Smackgirl, where she defeated France’s Tevi Sai and Japan’s Meguimi Yabushita.[3] In 2005, she was considered by many to be the best female MMA fighter in the world; however, the most famous fighter to emerge from Smackgirl was Megumi Fujii, a 115-pound Japanese native who dominated the strawweight class with twenty-six wins and three loses as of October 2013.

  Although the first women to compete in a modern-day MMA fight in the United States remain unidentified, one of the earliest on record is Jennifer Howe, who defeated Terry Lukomski with a rear naked choke on November 21, 1998, in Utah. Howe was the longtime girlfriend of MMA great Jeremy Horn, and her training partner and boyfriend stood by her as she became one of the best fighters in the early days of WMMA. During her seven-year career, Howe won thirteen professional fights, her only two losses going to Roxanne Modafferi, a tough opponent who ended up competing on the UFC’s Ultimate Fighter reality television competition series more than a decade later.

  Glorified Bar Fights

  While a lot of legitimate promotions sprang up in the wake of the UFC inaugural event’s success, MMA fights also began appearing as entertainment in bars. It m
ay be unfair to describe these events as MMA fights, although there were certainly rules and time restrictions in the spirit of professional MMA venues. One event, in Iowa, in 2002, included a bout between two young women, and although it was the shortest fight of the night, it was also the last, a position typically reserved for the main event.[4] Twenty-three-year-old state worker Misty Hytrek defeated twenty-one-year-old Janine Keptting, a karate instructor who lost within twenty seconds of the first round. Whether Hytrek was a trained fighter remains unknown, but she certainly made short work of Keptting with an abundance of punches, providing the latter with a broken nose. The fight night was apparently successful, but lawmakers quickly quashed these in-bar fights.

  Unfortunately, these no-holds-barred fighting events were not regulated, which means that people who should not have been fighting entered the fray. On June 14, 2003, at the Sarasota County Fairgrounds in Sarasota, Florida, Stacy Young, a thirty-year-old mother of two, was killed in a fighting competition called Toughman.[5] Toughman competitions originated in 1979, under the auspices of being a legitimate amateur boxing event that allowed anyone to enter the ring; the only limitation was that no competitor could have more than five amateur bouts. Thus, many individuals, like Stacy Young, had no training or fight experience. Many people point to Toughman as part of the MMA origin story, but it is a tenuous connection. Toughman was reminiscent of the early catch-as-catch-can exhibition at American fairs in the early twentieth century, but with punching as part of the program. When Young entered the ring, she thought it would be fun. Instead, she was beaten unconscious in front of a crowd of cheering fans and later pronounced brain dead at the hospital. Three other competitors were taken to the hospital after their fights in Sarasota, but Young was the only one to die. Young’s tragic death had a dramatic effect on fighting regulation in Florida. Sadly, Toughman remains linked to the sport of MMA in the minds of many. The death of the young mother instigated a media furor demanding the end of these extreme fighting sports, and MMA was grouped with this Toughman event. Fortunately, the UFC was already focusing on rebranding itself as a legitimate sport to continue to grow its business. ZUFFA, the company that owns the UFC tried to distance itself from its first fights, claiming that the sport and the athletes were safe now because of new rules and regulations.

  Hook-n-Shoot

  The success of the various Japanese female fighting promotions led Jeff Osbourne, UFC commentator and early supporter of all things MMA, to add women to his successful Hook-n-Shoot promotions in 2001. Hook-n-Shoot was an early MMA promotion that launched many famous fighters, including Frank Mir and Miesha Tate, into the UFC. But Osbourne did not just put women on his March 10, 2001, Hook-n-Shoot fight card; he had the two women featured as the main event of the evening. That night, bantamweight fighter Judy Neff defeated Jessica Ross with a technical knockout. The following year, on April 13, 2002, Hook-n-Shoot hosted the first all-female professional MMA fight card in the United States. There were seven bouts on the card, and the headliner, Debi “Whiplash” Purcell, choked Christine Van Fleet out in the first round. Hook-n-Shoot continued to feature all-female fight cards throughout the next decade, launching a number of big-name fighters into the spotlight. Debi Purcell, the headliner at the first Hook-n-Shoot event, would become one of the most active advocates for WMMA, even after she left the cage.

  FighterGirls

  In 2001, bantamweight fighter Debi “Whiplash” Purcell fought her first professional MMA bout in Minnesota. She defeated Amber Mosely with a surfeit of punches for the technical knockout in the first minute of the first round. From there, Purcell went on to win three more times in her career, and she was the first woman to be named “King of the Cage” in 2002. King of the Cage was another early promotion, with its first show in 1999, which launched the careers of several top UFC fighters, including Frank Lister, Shaun Sherk, and Quentin “Rampage” Jackson. Purcell fought Nicole Albrect for two 5-minute rounds and was declared the winner by unanimous decision. Albrect weighted thirty pounds more than Purcell and stood several inches taller. Purcell used her Muay Thai background to throw leg kicks and knees from the clinch when standing and took Albrect to the ground with several strong wrestling shots. The video of the fight shows the many differences in the early days of MMA compared to today, because Albrect is wearing wrestling shoes in the cage. Purcell is well-respected in the MMA community, not just as a female fighter, but as a fighter in general.

  Purcell is the only woman to act as coach for the short-lived International Fight League, an attempt to turn MMA into a semblance of a team sport. She also founded FighterGirls, a website designed to help match up female fighters from throughout the world and a place for women’s fighting news and events. The website eventually expanded to include a store, also called FighterGirls, which produces fighting gear for women. The site contains an extensive database of female fighters and a list of schools that provide training for women. Purcell is a pioneer of WMMA and supporter of female fighters, but she retired from the fighting world in 2008, after a defeat by another early female fighter, Rosi Sexton.

  Sexton began her professional career in 2002, and she continues to fight as of this writing in 2014. The fight against Purcell put Sexton on the map when she scored a victory by decision and became the new 130-pound female champion. She made headlines, however, not just for her victory in the cage, but for her fascinating and seemingly antithetical personal life. In addition to her career as a fighter, Sexton has a doctorate in theoretical computer science from the University of Manchester and runs a successful osteopathic practice in Manchester. People were baffled by her decision to fight in the cage, especially given her osteopathic practice. Sexton was also the mother of a two-year-old son at the time of her fight with Purcell, which, yet again, made her seem antithetical to the idea of first, a doctor, and second, a mother. But Sexton is all of these things—and more. In 2013, she was signed to the UFC bantamweight division, where she fought Alexis Davis at UFC 161. Although she lost the fight by unanimous decision, she continues to fight, as well as advocate for female MMA fighters.

  Women in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

  WMMA began to take off worldwide in the mid-2000s. In 2005, Australia’s first WMMA match took place at the Spartan MMA Showdown in March, between Fiona Attig and Mandy Stewart.[6] England already had WMMA bouts, as evidenced by Rosi Sexton’s dominating performance on British soil starting in 2002. The popularity of the UFC led to an explosion of training centers in the United States and other countries. Some gyms, for example, the Reality Training Center in Charleston, South Carolina, offered multiple types of fighting disciplines—including kickboxing, wrestling, and grappling—to train members for MMA venues.[7]

  Fourteen-year-old Kizma Button told reporters that she hoped to fight one day, despite the various injuries she received while training. Aside from gyms offering MMA training, the sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) flourished, thanks to the dominating presence of the Gracie family in the UFC. BJJ had been taught in the United States since the mid-1970s, but the UFC made the Brazilian/Japanese sport increasingly popular and facilitated a surge in interest. BJJ had the added benefit of being a particularly good martial art for women, because the gi, or kimono, helps increase leverage. The Gracie family’s own stock, Kyra Gracie, has remained one of the most popular female BJJ fighters, not only because of her black belt, but because she is quite attractive. In fact, Kyra’s reputation often exceeds that of one of the best female BJJ fighters in history, Lana Stefanac, despite the latter’s demonstrated dominance on the mat and in the cage.

  Lana Stefanac

  One of the first American women to make a name for herself in the international BJJ community was Lana Stefanac, who remains one of the greatest BJJ fighters of all time. Not just as a woman, or an American, but as an individual, her fight career rivals some of the most iconic names in the sport. Stefanac’s enviable record reads as a tableau of a fighter’s progression to greatness. In 2006, she won the Pan Ams in the
blue belt division; that same year, she fought and won three consecutive professional MMA matches, all ending via submission in the first round. She won the Pan Ams in the purple belt division the following year and came in second at Worlds. Stefanac won three more MMA matches during the next two years, rounding out her MMA career in 2008, with an impressive 6–0 professional record. In 2009, she dominated the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) World competition and came in first place in both her weight class and the absolute brown/black belt divisions, a first for an American woman. According to the ADCC, Stefanac has fought in nearly two hundred BJJ and no-gi matches and only lost a handful. In addition to her extraordinary personal fight record, she has also acted as a coach, manager, corner-woman, and advocate for numerous professional female fighters.

  After receiving her blue belt in BJJ in 2006, Stefanac appeared in her first professional MMA fight, against champion boxer Martha Salazar. California had previously hosted MMA bouts between women, but the fight between Stefanac and Salazar was the first WMMA match sanctioned by the California State Athletic Commission. Although Salazar was predicted to win via knockout, with 40–1 odds, Stefanac submitted her with a guillotine choke in the first round. Stefanac went on to fight five more times and retired from MMA undefeated in 2009.