Female fighting gets big-time attention on Sunday when CNN presents “Fighter Girls,” a documentary featuring former pro boxer turned mixed martial artist Michelle Gutierrez.
The debut episode will be shown Sunday, Oct. 23, at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT), with a replay broadcasting at 11 p.m. ET and Monday at 2 a.m. ET.
The one-hour special will be hosted by CNN correspondent Amber Lyon, who will document the Wand Team member after her latest victory over Amanda LaVoy.
While the womens’ divisions in MMA aren’t the standout classes in the sport, many agree females make up a lot of MMA’s fanbase, including UFC president Dana White.
White recently stated at the UFC 135 press conference that he believes a large percent of the MMA fanbase is female.
“Probably 45 percent of our fanbase is now female,” said White at the UFC 135 press conference.
“There was just a story done by Fox where girls were taking girls-trips to Vegas for fights. Whenever you go to any of the big fights, there’s girls there with their husbands or their boyfriends or whatever but there’s a lot of girls there either by themselves or with friends. It’s been amazing how fast our female fanbase has grown. We didn’t see that coming.”
He also spoke on adding a female division to the UFC.
“I say this all the time. The problem with female fighters is there’s not enough girls in each weight division to create an entire division so you can do these one-off fights but you can’t create an entire division,” said White. “That’s almost the problem we had with the heavyweights at one point and who knows? We’ll see where this thing goes over time. It never really panned out in boxing either where you had enough good female fighters to create an entire division. “
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