She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  On June 19, 2009, Bellator introduced its first featherweight fight, when Stefanie Guimaraes knocked out Yvonne Reis with knees with less than a minute remaining in the first round. Many other women signed on the Bellator roster. These included strawweight Felice Herrig, who defeated Jessica Rakoczy in her Bellator debut; Megumi Fujii, the Smackgirl strawweight champion; Lisa Ellis, another Smackgirl, Bodog, and Hook-n-Shoot alum; as well as Rosi Sexton, the British physician and MMA champion. Bellator began to collect a bevy of excellent female fighters from throughout the world, all of whom were searching for a place to compete in a televised platform. Strikeforce continued to be an excellent place for female fighters, but it featured only the 135-pound bantamweight and 145-pound featherweight classes. Women who did not compete in those particular weight classes were often limited to fighting in Asian MMA competitions, which offered more opportunity for a variety of sizes. But Bellator often featured fighters from some of the smaller weight classes and gave more women an opportunity to fight in the United States.

  One of Bellator’s drawbacks is that fighters compete with much greater frequency than in the UFC because of the tournament format. The seasons, which typically last about two months, include weekly fights and a large cohort of fighters. Women initially appeared intermittently in Bellator; it was not until season three, which took place August 12, 2010, through October 28, 2010, that Bellator introduced the first female championship division. The first weight-class competition that took place was between female strawweight fighters, who must weigh 115 pounds at the most. In the first round of the tournament, Jessica Aguilar defeated Lynn Alvarez with an arm triangle, Meguimi Fujii defeated Carla Esparza with an arm bar, Zoila Frausto won via unanimous decision over Jessica Penne, and Lisa Ward also won a unanimous decision against Aisling Daly. In the semifinals, held on September 30, 2010, Frausto scraped a win over Aguilar with a split decision, and Meguimi arm barred Lisa Ward. That placed Frausto and Meguimi in the final, which took place on October 28, and resulted in a win for the Japanese Meguimi, who defeated Frausto with a narrow split decision to become the first Bellator women’s champion.

  After season three, Bellator continued to sporadically include women on its fight cards, but there would never be another female championship tournament. On May 12, 2012, Jessica Aguilar, who continued to compete in Bellator and win her subsequent fights, defeated Megumi Fujii by unanimous decision. Aguilar remains the best strawweight fighter in the world, even though she decided not to sign with the UFC when they announced a strawweight season of the Ultimate Fighter for 2014, because she was already under contract with the World Series of Fighting promotion. The UFC is, at this point in MMA history, the elite fighting platform. Fighters who win championships in the UFC are considered the best in the world, despite whomever may hold the same title in other promotions. This is where Aguilar struggles to retain her title as the best strawweight. Statistically, as of this writing, she is still the best strawweight MMA fighter, but when her fellow 115-pound fighters enter the UFC and compete for the title, she may lose her standing in the eyes of many in the MMA community.

  Bellator’s occasional female bouts from 2010 through 2013, before it cut its female fighters, included appearances by Michelle Ould, Munah Holland, and Jessica Eye, who defeated the champion, Zoila Frausto, on December 12, 2012. In early 2013, professional boxer Holly Holm used her boxing skills to earn a technical knockout against Katie Merrill. Holm has a professional boxing record of thirty-three wins, two losses, and three draws. She transitioned into MMA in 2011, and has remained undefeated, with six wins and no losses, thanks to her striking skills, which earned her two knockouts, three technical knockouts, and one unanimous-decision victory. Fans have been clamoring to get Holm into the cage to face the undefeated champion, Ronda Rousey, but thus far, Dana White thinks she is unqualified to box in his promotion. Until she competes on a larger platform, the boxer will not be able to break into the UFC.

  Holm was the last woman to win in the Bellator cage. After that fight, Bellator released its female fighters, explaining in an interview that the company wished to develop its men’s division and simply could not provide its female fighters with enough opportunities.[11] With Bellator and Strikeforce out of the WMMA game in 2013, women needed a place to compete for the sport of WMMA to survive. While some people argue that Ronda Rousey saved WMMA, it seems more likely that the person who provided women with more opportunities to compete was not a fighter, but a promoter.

  Invicta FC

  In 2012, Shannon Knapp, an executive who held high-level positions in several MMA promotions, saw the opportunity to create her own venue when Strikeforce closed its doors. Knapp gathered the contracts of numerous top female MMA fighters and created Invicta Fighting Championships, or Invicta FC, a professional all-female MMA venue. Invicta FC offered its first show, streamed live and free on the Web, on April 28, 2012. Headlining the fight was longtime veteran Marloes Coenen, who defeated Romy Ruyssen by decision. Other experienced and high-ranking fighters were featured in the lineup. These included atomweight Jessica Penne (winner over Lisa Ellis by technical knockout); Liz Carmouche (winner over Ashleigh Curry by technical knockout); and the fight of the night, if not the year, between Kaitlin Young and Leslie Smith, which ended in a draw. Invicta has held several events featuring some of the best female fighters in the world. After offering the fights through a free streaming platform for the first few shows, the organization switched to the pay-per-view formula used by the UFC, although at a fraction of the price.

  One of the most fascinating aspects of Invicta FC for MMA aficionados are the “walkout” arrangements. In a typical UFC bout, fighters walk out with a large entourage of coaches, a medical crew, and security people while their song plays overhead. Between the music, the slow (or swift) swagger to the cage, checking in with medical personnel, hugging teammates, and then speaking to the official, each fighter may take as long as five minutes to enter the cage. During each walkout, commentators struggle to fill the void with pointless anecdotes and high-dollar advertisements. At Invicta events, each fighter walks out to her music by herself, having already parted with her team. Instead of traversing the distance of a large event center, fighters walk down a runway, disrobe, check in with officials, and then enter the cage. The process is much more streamlined and intimate than the typical walkout, even if the fighter is not surrounded by an entourage.

  Shannon Knapp also implemented a protocol for weigh-ins for Invicta fighters. Women tend to have a more difficult time cutting weight than men because of hormones and other physiological factors. Knapp’s extensive experience as a MMA executive promoter makes Invicta a highly organized event, with the focus on the fights, rather than any Sturm und Drang between fighters. The organization currently signs fighters ranging from 105-pound atomweights to 155-pound lightweights, although it seems likely that it will add some of the heavier weight classes in the future. Invicta continues to sign female fighters worldwide and now has title fights for all of its existing weight classes.

  Invicta FC represents the future of professional WMMA. While the greatest bantamweight fighters in the world may be signed with ZUFFA, Invicta provides a platform where numerous women can fight at an elite level. The promotion does not always receive as much media attention as it deserves, but this is because the most talked about female fighter, perhaps in history, while a supporter of Invicta, remains firmly and inextricably linked to the UFC. In 2013, when the UFC introduced its first-ever female division, it named Ronda Rousey the champion bantamweight fighter, even before she entered the cage.

  Ronda Rousey

  In 2011, Ronda Rousey was swiftly becoming one of the most talked about women in the competitive martial arts world. Rousey was brought up practicing judo, a Japanese art that uses hip throws and leg trips to take opponents to the mat, where the goal is to finish them with a grappling submission. Rousey qualified for the 2004 Olympic Games as the youngest competitor, at seventeen years of age. Four ye
ars later, she went to Beijing and earned two bronze medals at the 2008 Olympics. Two years after that, she entered the world of MMA with the tenacity expected of a former Olympian. After three definitive wins as an amateur, Rousey became a professional MMA fighter, winning her next four fights with furiously applied arm bars. But all of Rousey’s previous fights had been as a featherweight, at 145 pounds. Her new target, Miesha Tate, was the Strikeforce champion as a 135-pound bantamweight.

  Tate started her martial arts career as a wrestler on her high school’s all-male team. She won titles in multiple wrestling and grappling events before transitioning into her new career as a MMA fighter. Tate quickly dominated the bantamweight class and became the darling of WMMA, with an impressive record of twelve wins and two losses under the championship belt. Dubbed one of the “hottest women in MMA,” she appeared in the men’s magazines Maxim and FHM. Gina Carano’s retirement left a void at the forefront of the sport. Tate was presumed the new “face of WMMA” and the perfect target for the up-and-coming Rousey. Only a few months after Tate defeated Marloes Coenen for the Strikeforce title, Rousey defeated Julia Budd with an arm bar thirty-nine seconds into their November 18, 2010, fight. After acknowledging Budd, who was lying on the mat with a dislocated elbow, Rousey shocked the MMA community by calling out the incumbent Strikeforce champion, Tate. Challenging other fighters is standard practice in the boxing and MMA realm, but Rousey’s challenge raised eyebrows because although she was undefeated, four professional MMA fights were not enough to qualify her for the belt. More importantly, Rousey had won all of her fights in the 145-pound featherweight class and had yet to drop to 135 pounds.

  Rousey pleaded with the Strikeforce executives, claiming she would “put on a good show” if given a “crack at Miesha first.” While Rousey was making headlines by calling for a fight, Tate was anticipating a rematch with Sarah Kaufman, who was ranked second in the division. Rousey wanted to bypass Tate’s expected opponent and fight in a weight class in which she had never participated. As an undefeated fighter and a former Olympian, she argued that she would generate more interest than Kaufman. Her challenge dominated the postfight media blitz and overwhelmed the news of her quick defeat of Budd. On November 29, 2010, Rousey and Tate met for a press conference to discuss an upcoming fight.

  Ronda Rousey Challenges Miesha Tate and the Status Quo

  The press conference between Strikeforce champion Miesha Tate and newbie Ronda Rousey was a discussion of female representation more than a negotiation between fighters. Tate felt that she should fight Sarah Kaufman next rather than give the upstart Rousey a chance. Rousey audaciously argued that she deserved the chance, not simply because of her impressive 4–0 record, but because a fight against her would be more marketable than a rematch against Kaufman. Rousey argued that Strikeforce had the tendency of setting up fights based on monetary potential and not according to any ranking system. Based on this premise, Rousey believed that Strikeforce would make more money from a Rousey–Tate bout, explaining,

  I really feel 100 percent that a fight between her and me needs to happen. It’ll be great for women’s MMA. It’ll be the first highly anticipated fight in women’s MMA for a long time. . . . We need to capitalize on the opportunity while we still have it. I don’t want to risk her losing the title and us not being able to fight each other for the title.[12]

  Tate’s argument was simple: There is a hierarchy amongst female fighters, and Rousey had to qualify. Rousey had yet to fight at 135 pounds, so why should she get a title shot before the other women currently operating within that bracket? Rousey’s response was also simple: She was more marketable than Kaufman because of the growing hype surrounding her skill—and looks. Rousey explains her stance in a MMA Hour interview:

  Sarah Kaufman kind of gives boring interviews, she’s not a supermodel the way she fights, she doesn’t finish matches in extraordinary fashion. It’s just kind of being realistic. I’m sorry that I have to say things bluntly and offend some people. I just want there to be a highly marketable, exciting women’s title fight, and I want to be part of that because I feel like I could do a really good job, and you could, too [speaking to Tate]. I think the two of us could do a better job of that than you and Sarah Kaufman.[13]

  Rousey’s comments certainly enraged many people, but she made the legitimate, albeit infuriating, argument that women’s sports receive more recognition when the athletes are good-looking. When it comes to women and the sports media, the better looking an athlete is, the more media attention she will receive. Moreover, female athletes are discussed through a gendered framework because of the “female” qualifier. They are not just athletes; they are “female athletes.” This notation of gender means that the body is the focus of any and all conversation involving the athlete.

  WMMA Journalism

  Most MMA news outlets write about female fighters in a respectful and intelligent manner; however, there are always outliers who seek to create controversy (and increase clicks to their website) by writing demeaning and insulting articles about female fighters. The larger problem is when advertisements or articles use female sexuality to promote fights. In some cases, one fighter will be praised as attractive, while her opponent is promoted as the less attractive and, therefore, less popular fighter. Sexualizing female athletes occurs in every sport, but in a one-on-one contest like fighting, creating a difference between opponents based on looks alone is problematic in more ways than one.

  Female fighters are still considered anomalies and are often viewed with both fear and fascination. The female fighter who does not adhere to normative beauty ideals is often ridiculed or scorned by some media outlets and fans. It is interesting to examine previous female champions, for instance, Hattie Leslie and Hattie Stewart, both of whom were described as handsome, Amazonian women. That type of nuanced and descriptive language is rarely heard today; fighters are either deemed hot or ugly. Although there are numerous individuals who love the sport of MMA despite the appearance of the fighter, they are vastly outweighed by the “fan” who is disgusted by the appearance of a fighter. The faces and bodies of male fighters, of course, are not treated with the same level of scrutiny as those of female fighters. This is not to say that a male fighter cannot have his appearance critiqued, but that the conversation is decidedly different than the one about the female fighter. The debate surrounding Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate in 2011 was not about who was attractive and who was not. Instead, Rousey argued that she would be the best opponent for Tate because they were both conventionally attractive and could increase the ratings exponentially.

  The promotion for the fight between Rousey and Tate hinged on eroticizing both women. Rousey argued that the sport must embrace the sexualization of the athletes and use the attention to promote WMMA. Tate argued against this, yet Tate herself is no stranger to cheesecake portraiture, having posed scantily clad for numerous photo shoots for various publications. But posing for a provocative photo shoot does not make these women victims. In fact, many feminists believe that this type of self-promotion is empowering.

  The MMA Pinup

  Participation in sexualized, pinup photography does not mean that the models have lost agency. In her book Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture, scholar Maria Elena Buszek explains that pinup imagery is a source of power for women and third-wave feminists.[14] Second-wave feminism was a feminist movement in the Western world from the 1960s to the 1990s that sought social equality for women. In the 1990s, feminist ideology split into a third wave that primarily focused on the rights of individual women rather than women as a group. One of the primary differences between second- and third-wave feminists is the contentious subject of female sexuality and agency. While second wavers fought angrily for their sexuality to be free of any social context, third wavers “tend to feel their sex has much to explore and celebrate.”[15] Third wavers look at representations of women in popular culture to see how they can use those images for their own powerful statements.
Buszek believes that “by looking to theory and popular visual languages” that promote female power rather than commodifying women, “younger women who identity with feminism today have found tools for self-expression and a place for themselves in the continuum of feminist evolution.”[16] Thus, new participants in the feminist culture can look to popular culture and find agency in the images that are represented, as long as they can use these images in a positive manner.

  The icon of the pinup has, since its inception, been seen as an image of sexuality, individualism, and power. The pinup is typically a scantily clad or nude woman with extremely curvy proportions posing in a highly sexualized position and appearing to enjoy it. Although this image could be seen as merely a source of sexual visual pleasure for men, the pinup image reveals a woman who is comfortable and confident in her sexuality.

  One of the first images of the pinup, first marketed by Alberto Vargas in Esquire, was imitated by women during World War II to create homemade cheesecake photographs that were sent to their lovers overseas. Although both Vargas’s drawings and the DIY pinup pictures were used for men’s pleasure, the women who reproduced the images in Esquire were exploring a sexuality in their own lives that had yet to be seen in the United States. Buszek explains,

  The pin-up [sic] provided an outlet through which women might assert that their unconventional sexuality could coexist with conventional ideals of professionalism, patriotism, decency, and desirability—in other words, suggesting that a woman’s sexuality could be expressed as part of her whole being.[17]