If you’d like to win these shirts, here’s what to do: Submit your prediction for the Rousey vs. Carmouche fight — as well as the Dan Henderson vs. Lyoto Machida co-main event — in the comments section. Your entry should look something like this:
(Image courtesy of FightChix.com. Click for larger version.)
If you’d like to win these shirts, here’s what to do: Submit your prediction for the Rousey vs. Carmouche fight — as well as the Dan Henderson vs. Lyoto Machida co-main event — in the comments section. Your entry should look something like this:
Rousey def. Carmouche via submission (armbar), 2:53 of round 2 Henderson def. Machida via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 30-27)
Please include the judges’ scores if you think one or both of the fights will go the distance, as we might need them for a tie-breaker. Entries must be submitted by this Saturday at noon ET; only one entry per person will be accepted.
The most accurate guess will win the Ronda Knows/Keep Calm t-shirt package; if the winner happens to be a lady, she will also receive a pair of “Love the Mount” booty shorts, as a token of our respect. The second-place winner will earn one t-shirt of their choice. We’ll announce the results on Monday. Good luck.
Ronda Rousey is on the verge of doing something special by becoming the first woman to gain massive amounts of fame solely through MMA competition.Before Rousey, Gina Carano was the only female fighter to gain mainstream notoriety, and her popularity h…
Ronda Rousey is on the verge of doing something special by becoming the first woman to gain massive amounts of fame solely through MMA competition.
Before Rousey, Gina Carano was the only female fighter to gain mainstream notoriety, and her popularity has been aided by a career in acting. Aside from Carano, ring girls like Arianny Celeste were far more well known than any women involved in MMA.
Thankfully, that is beginning to change with the UFC’s addition of a women’s bantamweight class.
The division will make its debut at UFC 157, where Rousey will defend her UFC belt against Liz Carmouche in the main event. If all goes according to plan, this fight could mark the beginning of many great opportunities for female fighters.
Before history is made on Saturday, let’s take a look at the five individuals who most helped women’s MMA get to the point where it is today.
Before Chris “Cyborg” Santos became known for leveling women with the savagery of a wrecking ball to a papier-mache house, and before Ronda Rousey’s stunning look and ferocious armbar caught the world by surprise, Gina Carano was the …
Before Chris “Cyborg” Santos became known for leveling women with the savagery of a wrecking ball to a papier-mache house, and before Ronda Rousey’s stunning look and ferocious armbar caught the world by surprise, Gina Carano was the face of women’s MMA.
This mind numbingly gorgeous woman burst onto the scene in 2006, rattled off seven consecutive victories, secured a position as an American Gladiator and had men across the globe drooling at her faultless features and tenacity as an athlete.
Mainstream media took major notice and within two years Carano was a bona fide star who’d managed to aid in the growth of WMMA like none prior. She had it all: the looks, the charm, the charisma and the skill.
And then she ran into Chris “Cyborg” Santos in August of 2009 and the whole house came crumbling down on Carano’s head. Cyborg punished the former top-ranked female fighter, abusing her with vicious strikes before forcing a halt to the bout with one second remaining in the first round.
Most expected Carano to nurse her wounds, and return to form, perched near the top of the mountain, where she’d grown comfortable prior to her meeting with the monstrous Brazilian. But Carano did not return to the world of mixed martial arts.
American Gladiators was suddenly (but not surprisingly) axed, and it appeared Carano may fall completely from the limelight. After a handful of B-movie appearances however, her career took another interesting turn, as she landed the lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, starring opposite Hollywood heavyweights like Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor and rising star Channing Tatum.
While most predicted Carano’s A-list Hollywood efforts to be one-and-done, she hasn’t departed the cinematic world just yet. In fact, Carano’s got a few new film projects already in the can, including a role in the forthcoming Fast & Furious 6.
If Carano continues to secure roles in films of this magnitude, there’s remarkably little chance we’ll ever see her set foot in a cage, prepared to battle another woman, again. The money Hollywood offers far eclipses any payday Carano could hope for inside a cage, and physically, it’s significantly less demanding.
It’s impossible to fault Carano for the decision to make a career adjustment. It’s also just about impossible to avoid pondering a potential clash with today’s Queen of WMMA, Ronda Rousey.
As a fighter Carano was a diverse competitor, capable of finishing fights with fists, or submissions. During her incredibly brief run as a mixed martial artist she overwhelmed some quality competition, knocking out Rosi Sexton, decisioning Julie Kedzie, submitting Tonya Evinger and cruising past the highly touted Kelly Kobold, who today sports a highly impressive 18-3 record.
Carano wasn’t just a pretty face, she was extremely skilled.
Having lost but once in her career, to an imposing power puncher, it’s easy to play hypothetical scenarios out in the mind. Had Carano returned to action, would she have rebounded, returning to her dominant ways?
Better yet, how would a Carano/Rousey clash play out? Carano’s been tested by a few solid submission practitioners and avoided any fight ending locks or chokes. However, she’s never faced a grappler with as potent an offense as that owned by Rousey.
“Rowdy” puts her opponents on the ground, cranks on the arm and the fight is over. She’s done it six times over, and she’s eliminated some fine challenges along the way herself. Miesha Tate, Sarah Kaufman and Sarah D’Alelio are legit opponents.
Ronda made them appear amateurish in every sense.
I like Carano’s chances of surviving beyond the first frame against Rousey. I think she’s a savvy enough fighter to keep as much distance between Rousey and herself as possible while attempting to wear on the UFC’s first female champion’s gas tank.
I do not however see her escaping two rounds with the rowdy one.
This is little more than a dream fight these days, but were Carano and Rousey to meet in the center of the octagon today, Rousey puts her away early in round two. The end comes after Carano’s take-down defense fails her and an arm is ensnared.
Cris “Cyborg” Santos said Monday she won’t consider Ronda Rousey the world’s best fighter as long as a Cyborg-Rousey superfight fails to materialize.”I don’t want to talk about her more, but I want to fight her…Maybe she’s now happy because we won’t …
Cris “Cyborg” Santos said Monday she won’t consider Ronda Rousey the world’s best fighter as long as a Cyborg-Rousey superfight fails to materialize.
“I don’t want to talk about her more, but I want to fight her…Maybe she’s now happy because we won’t fight soon,” Santos said Monday on The MMA Hour broadcast, hosted by MMA reporter Ariel Helwani. “She has never proven she’s the best in the world because she has not fought me.”
Last week, Cyborg (10-1-1) signed with all-female promotion Invicta Fighting Championships. That move followed a wild news week for the Brazilian fighter and her manager, former UFC great Tito Ortiz, which saw Cyborg request and receive her release from the UFC before she ever took a fight. Cyborg requested the release despite the UFC allowing Cyborg to simultaneously sign with the UFC and compete for Invicta.
But there was apparently more to the story. Monday’s interview followed in the wake of Ortiz telling Bleacher Report Sunday in an exclusive interview that the UFC’s ultimate eight-fight offer was too much. Cyborg concurred with that thinking Monday afternoon.
“[The UFC] wants eight fights in my contract,” Cyborg said. “I don’t want eight fights at 135 pounds. I don’t see anything after Ronda…I think it’s better for me to do Invicta. Now I want only to think about my next fight.”
In Sunday’s Bleacher Report interview, Ortiz said recent comments from the UFC that Cyborg was becoming “irrelevant” provided additional motivation to work only with Invicta for the time being. Ortiz added, however, that he believed Cyborg-Rousey would “100 percent” happen, and that a 140-pound catchweight bout remained a possibility.
Cyborg is just about universally regarded as the top threat to the undefeated Rousey. Rousey, the face of women’s MMA and the UFC’s first-ever female belt-holder, makes her Octagon debut Saturday night against Liz Carmouche in the main event of UFC 157.
Cyborg, who said Monday she will not attend UFC 157, denied feeling any resentment over being excluded from the first woman’s fight in UFC history, and said she was hoping an exciting contest would continue to build public interest in women’s MMA.
“UFC is an event, and it has one guy at the [top of] organization,” Cyborg said, in apparent reference to UFC president Dana White. “He’s doing whatever he wants to do…He’s the one who will put the girls wherever he wants to put them. I feel good. I think all my fans know who is the best in the world…I like aggressive fights. I like two girls fighting. I hope the fans like the fight [on Saturday].”
Cyborg is slated to make her Invicta debut April 5 against Ediane Gomes.
UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey makes her long-awaited promotional debut at UFC 157 this Saturday, taking on Liz Carmouche in the first female bout in promotional history. Needless to say, the 26-year-old has had her hands full with…
UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey makes her long-awaited promotional debut at UFC 157 this Saturday, taking on Liz Carmouche in the first female bout in promotional history.
Needless to say, the 26-year-old has had her hands full with media obligations in the weeks leading up to the fight.
In an interview with the New York Post, the “Rowdy” one talked about her admiration for a fellow Strikeforce veteran recognized for both her skills in the cage and her good looks: Gina Carano.
“I would never be an MMA fighter if it wasn’t for [Carano],” Rousey told The Post. “I’m not dumb enough to not be grateful. … I just say thank God for Gina Carano.”
Rousey indicated that the first women’s MMA bout she ever saw was in Feb. 2007, when Carano earned a unanimous decision victory over Julie Kedzie under the now defunct EliteXC banner.
Carano was a perfect 7-0 as a professional mixed martial artist before getting her shot at then Strikeforce women’s featherweight champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos, losing by TKO at the closing seconds of the first round of their Aug. 2009 bout.
Rousey was linked to a superfight with Santos for months, before the Brazilian decided she could not make the 135-pound bantamweight limit and instead signed with Invicta Fighting Championships after Zuffa, LLC released her.
Carano has since taken a hiatus from the cage to focus on her acting career, which includes the recent action film Haywire and the upcoming Fast and the Furious 6.
Rousey believes that Carano‘s film career gives a valuable boost to women’s MMA:
“I really think what she’s doing with films is just as much an influence on women’s MMA as her fighting again,” Rousey said. “She’s continuing to represent us very well, bringing women’s MMA to an audience that doesn’t know MMA really at all.”
The former Olympic bronze medalist in Judo enters her epic UFC title fight with a perfect 6-0 record, finishing all of her opponents with an armbar in the first round.
The similarities between Rousey and Carano go beyond the fight world.
Rousey appeared in ESPN The Magazine’s 2012 Body Issue, while Carano appeared in the 2009 edition of the same publication.
Cris “Cyborg” Santos will finally return to action in early April as part of Invicta Fighting Championships, but there is still a chance she could end up in the UFC as part of a superfight against current bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey. Just last w…
Cris “Cyborg” Santos will finally return to action in early April as part of Invicta Fighting Championships, but there is still a chance she could end up in the UFC as part of a superfight against current bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey.
Just last week after requesting for her release from Zuffa (parent company of the UFC and her former employers at Strikeforce), Cyborg signed a three-fight deal with Invicta beginning with her April 5 showdown against EdianeGomes.
Over the weekend, UFC president Dana Whitesat baffled at the decision to sign a deal directly with Invicta when they had an offer on the table to put her under contract to the UFC and still let her fight in the all-women’s promotion.
Now as Cyborg’s manager, former UFC light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz, explains it there were more moving parts than just signing a deal with the UFC and going to fight in Invicta.
“We wanted to make the deal happen with the UFC. Negotiations were between me and Dana and it was for a four-fight deal with the fourth fight being against Ronda (Rousey), three fights going to Invicta and the fourth fight would be against Ronda. We were going to do a catchweight of 140 (pounds) and they said ‘OK we’ll call you back and we’re going to find out,'” Ortiz explained in an exclusive interview with Bleacher Report on Sunday.
“I wait two days and I get a call back and they said ‘no, we’ll do an eight-fight deal, we’ll send her to Invicta, have her fight three fights and next year we’ll have her fight against Ronda at 140 possibly,’ but there’s no exact direction what (weight) they wanted to use. So it really came down to the factor of them going back and forth.”
Ortiz says recent comments about how “irrelevant” his client apparently is, is becoming part of their ultimate decision to do a deal directly with Invicta for fewer fights overall, but hopefully strengthening their bargaining power if Cyborg wins all of those fights.
“Why would we allow our client to commit to such a long deal with no real plans or commitments to fight in the UFC? Why would we agree to a deal where an organization labels her as irrelevant as Dana (White) kept saying how irrelevant Cyborg was? We didn’t run away from the fight. We just asked for her release to sign a three-fight deal with Invicta,” Ortiz stated.
“She’ll fight the No. 2 contender at 145 pounds and then she’ll fight for the title against their 145-pound champ and then maybe Dana will have a little bit more respect for Cris Cyborg and value her as a counterpart for any superfight in women’s MMA.”
Ortiz may be a new player in the world of management for other fighters, but he negotiated and worked for his own career in the UFC for many years and now he believes he’s in a unique position to use what he learned to help his clients.
He won’t deny that money did play a factor in why they ultimately chose to sign with Invicta over the UFC, and he wanted to get a maximum deal for Cris Cyborg after she apparently didn’t experience much windfall in the wake of her becoming the Strikeforce women’s champion in 2009.
“The money had a lot to do with it,” Ortiz admitted. “I mean for once I can actually complain about money because I’m not the one fighting, it’s my clients. There’s a lot of little details that go upon a fight contract in general that we really look out for, that I looked for during my career, and now I’m able to battle for those things. At the end of the day, I talked to Cris Cyborg, she came to me and she was like ‘Tito, I became the world champion and nothing in my life changed, all I had around my waist was a gold piece of metal on a piece of leather, that’s all I had, nothing changed.'”
“People have go to understand, fighters are killing themselves to make billions for these companies, and if these guys become billionaires, come out of their pocket a little bit and let’s help the fighters.”
For years, Ortiz has been leading the charge on fighters getting paid more money and it appears he’s going to continue that battle now that he’s a manager in the sport as well. The goal now is for Cris Cyborg to go out and wreck shop in Invicta and then possibly go back to the negotiating table with the UFC.
“Instead of signing an eight-fight deal, we signed a three-fight deal. Guaranteed championship fight, the UFC only had one weight class that would have limited her to only fight in that one weight class. I really wanted to look out for my client and make the right decision,” Ortiz said.
“I’m very happy with this decision. I think it was the best decision because we still left it on the table with the UFC for the Ronda Rousey fight to start.”
And the Ronda Rousey fight is exactly what Cris Cyborg wants long term, it’s just not going to happen right now. Ortiz says Rousey has made this fight personal and it’s no longer just about business.
“Cris Cyborg still wants to kick her ass whether (Ronda) wins or loses,” Ortiz explained about the growing rivalry between the two women fighters. “It’s personal to her and a lot of people don’t understand that. Cris doesn’t care, she goes ‘Tito, if I’m still the champ, I still want to kick her ass, I want to cave her face in.'”
“She made it really personal with her, this is going back to me and Ken Shamrock where it was real. It didn’t need a company to sell this fight, it was emotional already just because of the things Ronda said about Cyborg. If you’ve ever seen one of Cyborg’s highlight tapes—I don’t think Ronda wants to be on those tapes.”
The biggest question still remains: Will we ever see Cris Cyborg vs. Ronda Rousey in the UFC?
Ortiz answers that question with a resounding “yes” and believes it’s only a matter of time before fans can see the biggest fight in women’s MMA history, if for no other reason than everyone involved has the chance to make a boatload of money.
“100 percent the fight will happen,” said Ortiz. “If Dana wants to make millions upon millions, and I know he does ’cause this is a good $15 to $20 million dollar fight they would make out of it. If they want the fight to happen, it’s going to happen. I don’t think we really care if it’s for a title. Cris doesn’t care if it’s for the title, she just wants to fight her, she wants to cave her face in. ‘I hate the b****,’ as she says.”
Damon Martin is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report and all quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
Cris “Cyborg” Santos will finally return to action in early April as part of