Invicta FC held its inaugural event earlier this year with a dynamite main event between Marloes Coenen and Romy Ruyssen. The all-female event also featured former title challenger Liz Carmouche and an exciting war between Leslie Smith and Kaitlin Young.
The event streamed live on the promotion’s website and was a fairly popular trend among the MMA community on Twitter.
The promotion already has a second event scheduled for July 28, which shows the promotion will make good on its intent of keeping the women fighters active. As of right now, only Strikeforce and Bellator are the major promotions that showcase women fighters.
While there’s no doubt that Strikeforce is the number two destination in the world for MMA fighters and fans, its third place ranking could see a shift as Invicta FC continues to grow.
The Chicago-based Bellator has long been playing second fiddle to the UFC and, for the most part, is considered the third best promotion in North America. While I think Bellator puts on great events, I can foresee a promotion like Invicta FC surpassing the company in a handful of years.
How can an all-female promotion possibly do better than a promotion that features both women and men? It’s actually very simple.
MMA fans know when they watch Bellator that it is nothing more than a filler until the next UFC/Strikeforce event. Aside from a handful of fights (you could honestly count them on two hands or less), Bellator bouts haven’t so much as cracked the list of top fights in a year.
Although the promotion doesn’t compete outright with the UFC, there’s no doubt Bellator is always competing to attempt to be the top promotion. It’s an uphill battle that Bellator will likely never achieve.
Invicta FC, on the other hand, can offer fans something they won’t get on a UFC event or even on a regular basis for Strikeforce shows: Women’s MMA. I’ve met all kinds of MMA fans who are both for and against it, but the fact remains WMMA is sort of a “niche-within-a-niche” sport.
If Invicta FC can continue putting on shows on a regular basis with top talent like their first show, WMMA fans will tune in to see their favorite stars compete. Instead of offering “B-level” talent in the mens division, Invicta FC can offer a great selection of WMMA bouts.
Of course, Strikeforce remains the go-to place for the top stars in WMMA. But for the ladies who aren’t guaranteed a spot on a card, such as the ladies whose last names aren’t Rousey or Tate, Invicta FC will give them a place to grow their stock in the rankings and remain active.
The final point I’ll make about Invicta FC’s potential chances at rising as a top promotion lays in the product itself. I’m by no means condoning this advertisement method, but the top demographic for MMA is the young adult males age group.
In case people forgot, these young adult males have plenty of hormones going through their body, and seeing two attractive women compete is something that can appeal to that demographic. We saw it with the Rousey-Tate matchup, in which the women’s looks were brought up as a reason for the success of the pre-fight hype.
I’m certainly not saying Invicta FC will become a huge promotion in North America; that would be a bit of hyperbole, given the promotion’s young history. But they can certainly become a top promotion for WMMA and give fans something they can’t find on TV every weekend.
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