Evinger: The UFC doesn’t really care about WMMA
Tonya Evinger: “I think they don’t really care about the women…Ronda Rousey is their main worry. She’s what they’re concerned with.”
Tonya Evinger has been fighting in women’s professional MMA since 2007, before the UFC decided to get into the game and support it. Evinger believes now even though women are fighting the UFC, that they don’t really care about all woman in the UFC or women’s MMA in general, just their champion Ronda Rousey:
“I think they don’t really care about the women,” Evinger said. “Ronda Rousey is their main worry. She’s what they’re concerned with.”
Evinger (14-5) partly understands why the UFC pushes Rousey, the women’s bantamweight champion, so hard. “Rowdy” is their big moneymaker and one of the top stars in the entire organization — man or woman. What Evinger doesn’t get is that, in her opinion, the UFC doesn’t give enough shine to Rousey’s challengers and the rest of the division. She points out that there are only four of 15 ranked women’s 135-pound athletes in the UFC booked for bouts currently.
“I think they’re missing the whole point,” Evinger said. “They put all the effort in promoting certain people and that’s it. It’s like when guys like B.J. Penn and Chuck Liddell retired, they didn’t build new guys under them. Now no one knows who some of these people are. I think that they’re making that same mistake with the women. They’re putting all the limelight and the exposure on one woman and forgetting about everyone else.”
The comments from Evinger seem to be in stark contrast to the actions of the UFC thus far in regards to women’s MMA. Evinger lost her fight to join the cast of the Ultimate Fighter 18 and the UFC declined to pick up her contract to compete afterwards, which might be a reason for her criticism.
The UFC introduced a bantamweight’s women division and featured them on the eighteenth season of the Ultimate Fighter. The UFC also created a straw-weight division and also held an entire season of the Ultimate Fighter devoted to crowning a champion for that division. The UFC also supports Invicta FC which is the world’s leading organization for women.