Dana White still the Bob Reilly of women’s MMA
Mixed Martial Arts is not the world’s fastest growing sport, UFC is. Take away the UFC, and what is left is…
Mixed Martial Arts is not the world’s fastest growing sport, UFC is. Take away the UFC, and what is left is at best a generation or two away from the mainstream.
With the purchase of Strikeforce by Zuffa, the potential exists for that promotion to be morphed into a regional feeder, or to simply fade to black. Were either of those possibilities to happen, women’s MMA (WMMA) will be gutted.
Fighting professionally is an extraordinarily tough job, even in the UFC. For those trying to get into the UFC, it is tougher still, with a miniscule sponsor base, short purses, and often not even health insurance, in a game where people are trying to hurt you daily. Take away Strikeforce, and women’s MMA will be stuck in the regional basement, with nowhere to go.
UFC President Dana White has repeatedly detailed a well-reasoned stance agaist WMMA – there simply are not enough top-level female fighters. There’s this big misconception that I don’t like women’s fighting,” White explained this summer on the Forbes Sports Money show. “The problem with women’s fighting — and it was a problem with boxing, and it’s a problem with MMA now — is you don’t have (enough) women good enough to create an entire division. What you get is a couple of women that are really good and a lot of women that really aren’t. And I don’t like lopsided fights, especially with women. So, as the sport continues to grow … if you can create an entire division of talented women, I’m all about it.
However, in a curbside interview with TMZ earlier this year, White was asked directly “When are we going to see women in the UFC?”
His reply was characteristicaly blunt: “Never.”
Then for anyone who remained unclear, he repeated himself: “Never.”
In short, for a long time running, Dana White has been the Bob Reilly of women’s MMA.
This is too bad, as women’s MMA has it’s share of the Holy F—— S— moments that define MMA, and can pull huge numbers. While the peak of UFC on Fox was a record breaking 8.8 million viewers, Gina Carano vs. Kaitlin Young earned 5.5 million viewers.
White’s attude towards WMMA was recently profiled by journalist of the year Ariel Helwani, and things could, maybe, be warming, an itty bit.
When talking about the late stoppage in the Chris Weidman-Tom Lawlor bout, White said he felt there was also a late stoppage in the Ronda Rousey-Julia Budd fight the night before at Strikeforce Challengers in Las Vegas.
The mention was a surprising one for obvious reasons, but it got me wondering whether White, who, along with his partners at Zuffa, now owns Strikeforce, was warming up to the idea of promoting women’s fights.
Not so fast. The UFC president still believes the divisions are too shallow on talent right now.
“As the sport continues to grow and as time goes on, maybe that will change,” White said. “Maybe it will change or maybe less women will get involved, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. Time will only tell. I don’t know. But yeah, I still feel the same way.”
After Gina Carano’s absence took some of the spotlight away from the female fighters, the buzz seems to be coming back, thanks in large part to the emergence of Ronda Rousey, who White admitted after the presser that he was impressed with.
“She’s talented,” White said. “Great fights.”
So for now, women’s MMA fans will have to settle on a mention from White. You gotta start somewhere.
