Womens' MMA mega-thread

[sleepinbin]

If you follow MMA and use the internet, you will have had a hard time not hearing about Fallon Fox. Mainstream outlets such as TMZ and The NY Times have done features on her, along with all of the MMA heavy-hitters reporting on her last fight.

Her last fight drew a lot of interest – to testify go on to Youtube and see how many views the highest grossing Fox Vs. Jones video has – over 250,000 in less than two months. Cyborg vs Muxlow by comparison has just under 110,000 views in 3+ months. In fact, there is only 1 invicta fight on YT (coenen/ruyssen) that tops Fox's viewing numbers and it has over a year head-start (with views being cumulative over time).

The current Org. that Fox fights for – CFA – seems to be putting a lot of effort into promoting her. I don't have access to financial reports, but there is clearly an incentive, just as there is/was for the UFC to push marketable fighters of questionable ability and experience, ie Brock Lesnar who is still responsible for some of their biggest PPV numbers.

As for being unknown if she hadn't gone public about being transgender, well, you can twist most fighters' popularity and say it's only due to this or that.

Would Cris Cyborg have got the fights/breaks she received if she wasn't married to Evangelista  Cyborg Santos and training out of ChuteBoxe a few years ago? Ronda Rousey probably wouldn't have been fast-tracked or be as popular as she is if she looked like Ediane Gomes. Gina Carano also had influential connections at the beginning of her career and good looks which helped her a lot.

Free YouTube videos are very very very bad indicators of what would sell on a PPV.  Also with MMA's mainstream aspirations, shoving a huge controversy - remember, lots of the MMA fans talking about this do not agree with Fox fighting women! - into the spotlight is going to be absolutely awful and no only will cause lots of MMA fans to be disgusted but is not going to get any good mainstream press. And we're talking *actual* mainstream press, not bloody TMZ.

CFA's incentive is clear - nobody had heard of the before Fox. It's easy to use controversy to get a name, but once you already have a name, you really want to avoid that, because once you are at a certain size, controversy loses you more people than it gains, especially when you drag in a whole host of really complicated gender issues that society has enough trouble dealing with in regular arenas, let alone the arena of of organised face-punching.

Lesnar is an appalling comparison as he was already a well known, mainstream figure whose very existence fighting in his class did not attract huge controversy. Sure, people disliked him but nobody thought his participation was inherently unfair and wrong.

Would Cyborg have got as much attention without her affiliations? Well, if she still fought the same way, yes. Evangelista is a nobody and Chute Boxe is a ghost of what it once was - it has close to zero influence these days. She, by the way, never got fast-tracked, she fought her share in the minor leagues (5 fights). Gina and Rousey's looks helped, yes, but again, NONE of these are in any way analogous to Fox. Fox vs Cyborg or Rousey won't happen and it shouldn't happen.

[jiminy]

Free YouTube videos are very very very bad indicators of what would sell on a PPV. 

Are you sure? So if I told you there were two back to back UFC PPVs from last year, one with 286,000 views on its Youtube preview and one with 1.7M views, you wouldn't like to estimate which one sold considerably more actual PPV buys than the other?

Granted it's not conclusive evidence, but when you see clear disparity like that, it's a pretty good indicator of where interest lies...

Lesnar is an appalling comparison as he was already a well known, mainstream figure whose very existence fighting in his class did not attract huge controversy. Sure, people disliked him but nobody thought his participation was inherently unfair and wrong.

That wasn't my point, I'm not comparing Lesnar and Fox like-for-like. To reiterate, I'm simply saying that in this game there is no pre-set requirement to have X-amount of experience or to have beaten so-and-so for an organisation to give you an opportunity, if they so wish.

Also, I'm really not advocating Fallon Fox's participation or looking for a debate about it, but looking at the facts; –

*Some governing bodies have already commissioned her to fight in WMMA
*Her story has generated a lot of press, popularity (granted mostly notoriety)
*Cyborg has already spoken about being willing to fight her

...I personally think there's a chance this fight could happen, some day...

[sleepinbin]

Free YouTube videos are very very very bad indicators of what would sell on a PPV. 

Are you sure? So if I told you there were two back to back UFC PPVs from last year, one with 286,000 views on its Youtube preview and one with 1.7M views, you wouldn't like to estimate which one sold considerably more actual PPV buys than the other?

Granted it's not conclusive evidence, but when you see clear disparity like that, it's a pretty good indicator of where interest lies...

Lesnar is an appalling comparison as he was already a well known, mainstream figure whose very existence fighting in his class did not attract huge controversy. Sure, people disliked him but nobody thought his participation was inherently unfair and wrong.

That wasn't my point, I'm not comparing Lesnar and Fox like-for-like. To reiterate, I'm simply saying that in this game there is no pre-set requirement to have X-amount of experience or to have beaten so-and-so for an organisation to give you an opportunity, if they so wish.

Also, I'm really not advocating Fallon Fox's participation or looking for a debate about it, but looking at the facts; –

*Some governing bodies have already commissioned her to fight in WMMA
*Her story has generated a lot of press, popularity (granted mostly notoriety)
*Cyborg has already spoken about being willing to fight her

...I personally think there's a chance this fight could happen, some day...

On the numbers - the difference, apart from the obvious orders of magnitude, is what drives the views. People will watch what they perceive as a freakshow for free online just to check it out, and a lot of them will disapprove, as we saw. Will they pay for it? No. This isn't 2004 in Japan (and we all saw how well that went anyway).

As for the licensing - yes, Florida did, whose commission is widely considered a joke (see also: Texas). That's no indication of if NJ, CA and NV will play ball, they likely won't, and that is major bad press as well as making things more hassle than they're worth for the organisation. The publicity is, as you admit yourself, mostly bad and the casual fan will not be into this. Cyborg says a lot of things, good luck to her. She doesn't pick the fights, and she's probably aware that fighting a low-level 38 year old who is even more a figure of hatred and controversy than herself won't look bad for her.

So, no, there is no chance, unless Cyborg relapses into the lower leagues. No legitimate, major organisation would take the risk - nor do they need to. Good luck to Fallon Fox, I don't begrudge her her career but if she is thrust up now it will be as a freakshow rather than based on talent or success, and that is bad for her, bad for whatever major org picks her up, bad for the sport's perception and bad for transgendered athletes in general. 

[lucad]

I'm stumped as to why you think Fallon Fox is going to draw worth a damn.

Just because she/he is a man. And being a man she/he is the only person capable of standing in a cage against cyborg. You're right that he didn't earned anything yet as a fighter, but like I said there's nobody else left for cyborg within the female gender. By the way, I couldn't care less about this fight and cyborg in general. This is probably because, deep inside me, I can't see her clean! I don't know how you can build such a powerful body on a woman without using PED. IMO, there's no one chance in this world she's all natural, that's it!

That said, just a few pics to get this thread a little hotter....

Miriam Nakamoto = MMA rising star = multiple Muay Thai world champion = Beauty = Goddess

[sammy_scuffles]

I'm stumped as to why you think Fallon Fox is going to draw worth a damn.

Just because she/he is a man. And being a man she/he is the only person capable of standing in a cage against cyborg.

Let's be clear, Fallon Fox was a man. Not is a man. Suggesting that a person who self-identifies as female and has taken the enormous step of undergoing gender reassignment surgery to make it so is still their original gender is pretty much a douchebag thing to do. Fallon Fox is female. Show some respect.

As for 'capable of standing in a cage against Cyborg', that's ridiculous. Fallon Fox has nowhere near the experience level or skill as someone like Coenen has and likely wouldn't last anywhere near as long.

I'm less than sold on whether Fallon Fox should be able to compete against women in a sport like MMA - especially seeing as medical opinion about whether she has an unfair advantage seems to be split - but regardless of whether she has some natural advantage or not she's certainly not ready to be lumped in with the elite of the sport.

[lucad]

I'm stumped as to why you think Fallon Fox is going to draw worth a damn.

Just because she/he is a man. And being a man she/he is the only person capable of standing in a cage against cyborg.

Let's be clear, Fallon Fox was a man. Not is a man. Suggesting that a person who self-identifies as female and has taken the enormous step of undergoing gender reassignment surgery to make it so is still their original gender is pretty much a douchebag thing to do. Fallon Fox is female. Show some respect.

I'm sorry Sammy, but I respect whoever I want...and even if I didn't respect this person, that wouldn't be your problem to teach me respect.

That said, I think everybody is free to undergo any gender sugery they like, but "reassigning" sex doesn't mean you can "reassign" the bone structure, the testosterone levels, the muscle composition, etc. which will always be manly in Fallon Fox.
So I think she'll always have physical advantages on all the other female fighters, reason why she could take on cyborg. The skillset is out of debate, I'm talking about pure power and physicality here, which is pretty much everything you need to (at least) limit cyborg aggression.
As for Coenen, that's right what I'm saying: she is a fantastic all around fighter and it was such a shame to see her completely unable to compete against that brute force. If Fallon Fox improve technically, she can at least fight cyborg without having that huge physical handicap on her.

[sammy_scuffles]

That said, I think everybody is free to undergo any gender sugery they like, but "reassigning" sex doesn't mean you can "reassign" the bone structure, the testosterone levels, the muscle composition, etc. which will always be manly in Fallon Fox.

Some of that's right and some of it's wrong. Naturally bone structure isn't going to change, although at least some of the medical professionals are saying that bone density is going to reduce towards normal female levels. Testosterone levels you're wrong about - even the doctors who are against her competing with women agree that her testosterone levels will be within normal female ranges unless she's taking testosterone in some other way. Opinions seem to be fairly split on the muscle mass / density point.

A couple of articles from Bloody Elbow have interviews with doctors about the topic. The first is with doctors who are of the opinion that her physical advantages aren't particularly significant, while the second clearly is of the opinion that she does have advantages. It's interesting reading either way.

As I mentioned, I'm inclined to say that I don't think she should be fighting women simply because fighter safety is so important and because if the medical professionals can't come to a consensus then safety has to come first. It's especially difficult at the low levels she's fighting at now because matchmaking at that level - where fighters have little experience and less fights to base rankings off - tends to be a little haphazard at the best of times.

So I think she'll always have physical advantages on all the other female fighters, reason why she could take on cyborg. The skillset is out of debate, I'm talking about pure power and physicality here, which is pretty much everything you need to (at least) limit cyborg aggression.

Sorry, that's ridiculous. You can't take the skill set out of a debate. We're talking about whether she can challenge Cyborg at fighting, not whether she's as strong as Cyborg. Power is only part of the equation and even if Fox has some degree of physical superiority (which is going to be razor thin in any case against an athlete like Cyborg) she simply doesn't have the skill set at this point in her career for it to matter worth a damn. You're talking about putting someone with three fights (against nobody good) in against someone who's universally regarded as the best fighter in her weight class. That's unfair and unsafe - and not to Cyborg.

[sleepinbin]

Lucad, it's pretty rich that on a femdom forum - where you'd think we'd all be pretty for female empowerment - that you consciously refuse to refer to a MtF transgendered person as "she/he". Not sure what you're trying to prove but legally Fallon Fox is a she and not referring to her as such is just being shitty for it's own sake.

Sammy is, as usual, pretty on the ball. Lucad, I advise reading WMMA fighter and medical professional Rosi Sexton's blog on the topic rather than just parroting Joe Rogan's ignorant remarks.

[wrestling_pi]

So let me ask about the other direction.

If a woman wants to be a man, and goes through everything needed to do so, should he(or she, however you prefer) then be able to step into the ring with a man?  I am assuming that the hormones and such would increase bone density, muscle mass, testosterone... things of that nature. 

[jiminy]

On the numbers - the difference, apart from the obvious orders of magnitude, is what drives the views. People will watch what they perceive as a freakshow for free online just to check it out, and a lot of them will disapprove, as we saw. Will they pay for it? No. This isn't 2004 in Japan (and we all saw how well that went anyway).

...But you can't accurately account for the reason each and every one of those viewers is checking out Fallon Fox's fights. The reasons are bound to be varied. Your 'freakshow' reasoning is one theory and I'm not saying it's wrong, although there are some taking a different stance. There are some who see her as a trail-blazer and an inspiration for following her ambition.

The only thing you can say is a fact is that people are showing huge interest, one way or another, fans and media alike. 

Without drifting off into the realms of "2004 in Japan", you were adamant that Youtube vids are a poor indicator of what will sell on PPV. So if there is no benefit in uploading vids to Youtube to 'hype' a PPV, then why do companies like UFC, InvictaFC, etc, do it? Again – looking at the numbers of people interested in UFC 147 and 148 previews respectively, I would suggest there is clear correlation, in today's market, between interest on Youtube and PPV buys.

if she is thrust up now it will be as a freakshow rather than based on talent or success, and that is bad for her, bad for whatever major org picks her up, bad for the sport's perception and bad for transgendered athletes in general.

These "to hell in a handbasket" type posts are funny. I really don't think Fallon Fox is going to cause that much ill-feeling whatever her future holds.

[sammy_scuffles]

So let me ask about the other direction.

If a woman wants to be a man, and goes through everything needed to do so, should he(or she, however you prefer) then be able to step into the ring with a man?  I am assuming that the hormones and such would increase bone density, muscle mass, testosterone... things of that nature.

A question for the medical professionals again I guess. Although in that case I'd likely be more concerned for the safety of the transgender athlete than the other way around. I don't really have the time to do any reading at this point but if I had to guess I'd think that a female->male transgender person likely takes testosterone for the rest of his life to stay within normal ranges but I have no idea how that would really affect things like muscle mass.

[sammy_scuffles]

On the numbers - the difference, apart from the obvious orders of magnitude, is what drives the views. People will watch what they perceive as a freakshow for free online just to check it out, and a lot of them will disapprove, as we saw. Will they pay for it? No. This isn't 2004 in Japan (and we all saw how well that went anyway).

...But you can't accurately account for the reason each and every one of those viewers is checking out Fallon Fox's fights. The reasons are bound to be varied. Your 'freakshow' reasoning is one theory and I'm not saying it's wrong, although there are some taking a different stance. There are some who see her as a trail-blazer and an inspiration for following her ambition.

The only thing you can say is a fact is that people are showing huge interest, one way or another, fans and media alike. 

Without drifting off into the realms of "2004 in Japan", you were adamant that Youtube vids are a poor indicator of what will sell on PPV. So if there is no benefit in uploading vids to Youtube to 'hype' a PPV, then why do companies like UFC, InvictaFC, etc, do it? Again – looking at the numbers of people interested in UFC 147 and 148 previews respectively, I would suggest there is clear correlation, in today's market, between interest on Youtube and PPV buys.

if she is thrust up now it will be as a freakshow rather than based on talent or success, and that is bad for her, bad for whatever major org picks her up, bad for the sport's perception and bad for transgendered athletes in general.

These "to hell in a handbasket" type posts are funny. I really don't think Fallon Fox is going to cause that much ill-feeling whatever her future holds.

How many people do you think would have watched Fallon Fox's fight if not for the controversy regarding her gender? Roughly none is my guess. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that likely that loads of people watched that video to see a talented athlete compete. Unfortunately those views also would have come with the whole range of opinions on the topic (From Rogan and Mitrione being disgraceful individuals all the way through to people who thought 'good for her'), and based on the vitriol that turned up in the comments of various news stories at the time it seemed like there's unfortunately a rather large number of people who did take it the same way as those two idiots.

I think the point about the UFC videos is a little off base too. They're advertising, plain and simple. One is advertising a card that practically nobody gives a damn about and the other is advertising one of the most anticipated fights in MMA history. The reason so few people watched the advertising for 147 is simply because they looked at the names on the card and went "I'm not buying that" without even needing to look at the advertising. The Fallon Fox fight video you're referring to isn't advertising, it's a low-level fight that received enormous advertising because of controversy and you could see it for free. If it had cost $5 to see it then it would probably have gotten about eleven people to watch it.

In any case I don't think Fox is going to end up being anything more than a minor league fighter with half a dozen fights to her name anyway - simply because of how late she started. It'd be pretty unusual for someone who starts their chosen sport at 38 to make it to the top levels.

[jiminy]

How many people do you think would have watched Fallon Fox's fight if not for the controversy regarding her gender? Roughly none is my guess. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that likely that loads of people watched that video to see a talented athlete compete. Unfortunately those views also would have come with the whole range of opinions on the topic (From Rogan and Mitrione being disgraceful individuals all the way through to people who thought 'good for her'), and based on the vitriol that turned up in the comments of various news stories at the time it seemed like there's unfortunately a rather large number of people who did take it the same way as those two idiots.

I think the point about the UFC videos is a little off base too. They're advertising, plain and simple. One is advertising a card that practically nobody gives a damn about and the other is advertising one of the most anticipated fights in MMA history. The reason so few people watched the advertising for 147 is simply because they looked at the names on the card and went "I'm not buying that" without even needing to look at the advertising. The Fallon Fox fight video you're referring to isn't advertising, it's a low-level fight that received enormous advertising because of controversy and you could see it for free. If it had cost $5 to see it then it would probably have gotten about eleven people to watch it.

In any case I don't think Fox is going to end up being anything more than a minor league fighter with half a dozen fights to her name anyway - simply because of how late she started. It'd be pretty unusual for someone who starts their chosen sport at 38 to make it to the top levels.

I didn't say they were watching to see a great athlete. It really goes without saying that the controversy is the driving factor regarding the attention she's receiving. You have people that have been very opinionated on both sides, but there's also that large chunk of people silently observing. Curious, drawn in, still not sure what to make of it all, but watching...

The point about the UFC vids is just to show there does exist a correlation between interest shown on Youtube vids and PPV sales. I don't think it is a "very very very" bad indicator, I think it is an indicator – not a conclusive one, but an indicator nonetheless. As I said before, I think she'd give an InvictaFC PPV a boost but we'll have to wait and see what the future holds, if anything.

Her fight against Allanna Jones wasn't terribly convincing but she won. For what it's worth I also expect her to struggle if she moves up in competition much further.

Jones BTW just got wiped out via head kick knockout against Holly Holm, transitioning from Boxing to MMA.

[jiminy]

Holly Holm, the preacher's daughter... Awesome KO.

[lucad]

Holly Holm, the preacher's daughter... Awesome KO.

Another worthy addition to WMMA...fresh talent fo a growing sport that desperately need it!! Can't wait to see her facing real challenges.

In the near future I see a lot of the best female martial artists from all the different disciplines making the transition to MMA.
After her Invicta 6 victory Miriam Nakamoto openly admitted that finally she gets some financial rewards from her fighting and she regrets not having made this step to MMA earlier in her career. Rousey repeatedly said that the lack of money in the sport was the main reason for quitting her judo career.

I mean, while most of the male martial artists are still making a good amount of money from various discipines like boxing, women's martial arts world is gonna be just MMA and MMA only in a few years. The interest is finally gathering around the UFC division and the Invicta promotion and I think this is the first time ever a female martial art have a serious chance to be accepted by the mainstream public opinion and eventually become quite popular. I mean, women's boxing or kickboxing never got close to have this kind of interest from media and fans. And this mean big money for the girls, money they couldn't even imagine in every other fighting sport.
Reason why I can't see, in the next years, many talented female boxers, kickboxers, judokas, grapplers and wrestlers turning down the opportunity to get under the spotlight of MMA and try to build a career in a financial rewarding sport. There's still plenty of room in WMMA, many weight classes can be filled and created and I think we're just witnessing the beginning of an era where WMMA will become more and more popular and full of talent...
At least I hope so.