Ronda Rousey and the biggest hype train the UFC has promoted in quite some time will be blowing through the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA in February for UFC 157. Not only is Rousey part of the card, but her fight with Liz Carmouche will be the Main Even…
Ronda Rousey and the biggest hype train the UFC has promoted in quite some time will be blowing through the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA in February for UFC 157.
Not only is Rousey part of the card, but her fight with Liz Carmouche will be the Main Event of the evening. So much for easing Rousey into the Octagon.
The pulse I’m feeling from the majority of B/R readers is that you feel as though Rousey has been hyped up to the point where it’s hard to imagine her stock rising any higher. Yes, she has great judo skills and can pull a mean armbar on everyone, but is the UFC making a wise decision in placing her and Carmouche in a main event for the first female UFC fight?
It’s the hope of fans that placing Rousey as the headliner isn’t foreshadowing the fact that this is going to be a card light on big names. There have been rumors of so many fighters participating in this event, but as of now (just a little over two months from the event) there doesn’t appear to be anything resembling a complete fight card confirmed.
The only other fight confirmed for the event is Urijah Faber vs. Ivan Menjivar.
Perhaps Dana White knows Rousey can sell people on purchasing the fight to see her at this stage of her career. She has no losses and has appeared to be the most dominant female fighter we have ever seen in MMA.
I bet White also knows that she is one loss from losing a lot of her selling influence.
If Rousey was placed as part of a card and not the main event at UFC 157 and went on to lose, who in their right mind would believe she’d be able to sell a main event?
This is a great idea for the UFC. Put their poster girl out there now and have her sell a fight while she is the talk of the MMA world because you can’t be certain that her success is going to continue.
I do feel, however, that this is a bad sign for fans with regard to how the entire UFC 157 card will shape up.
Joe Chacon is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report and a staff writer for Operation Sports. You can follow him on Twitter @JoeChacon.
The UFC took a momentous leap forward into women’s mixed martial arts by officially making Ronda Rousey the promotion’s first ever female champion.UFC President Dana White awarded Rousey with the company’s inaugural women’s championship belt at the UFC…
The UFC took a momentous leap forward into women’s mixed martial arts by officially making Ronda Rousey the promotion’s first ever female champion.
UFC President Dana White awarded Rousey with the company’s inaugural women’s championship belt at the UFC on Fox 5 pre-fight press conference on Thursday. White also announced that “Rowdy” will make her Octagon debut opposite Liz Carmouche when the two headline February’s UFC 157 in Anaheim, California.
As a long-time proponent of women’s MMA, I have to say that I am quite impressed by the promotion’s faith in Rousey and in other emerging female fighters.
Even before the Olympic bronze medalist judoka became the first women’s UFC champ, White and company were already touting her as the biggest name in WMMA.
I have to give the promotion props for laying the groundwork so that Rousey and other female fighters could smoothly transition into the big show.
The company has shown a more enlightened view towards female fighters (and female athletes in general) that other sports should look to emulate. You’d be hard-pressed to find another major sport that actively integrates women into the fold, let alone one that would give a female athlete top-billing.
However, no amount of altruism can overshadow the fact that there’s money to be made by having a women’s division. But by the UFC saying that female fighters are just as marketable as male fighters, the promotion is basically leading the way for gender equality in major sports.
Rather than separating the sexes by relegating women to an entirely different entity, like the NBA does with the WNBA, the UFC has proven that a synergy between the genders has to occur in order to raise the popularity of female athletes. Women could certainly carry a promotion on their own, like Invicta FC, for example, but in order for female fighters to gain mainstream acceptance, they have to be cross-promoted with male fighters.
What’s brilliant about the UFC’s strategy is that, along with cross-promotion, the company is also immediately putting the women’s division to the test by having Rousey versus Carmouche headline a major pay-per-view event as the inaugural women’s UFC bout. This move will instantly garner the division a ton of interest and could possibly help to win over fans skeptical of WMMA.
The UFC’s integration of new divisions, such as the lighter weight classes, hasn’t always gone smoothly, mostly due to marketing failures.
When the promotion announced the addition of the bantamweight and featherweight divisions during the UFC-WEC merger, there was very little marketing done to hype the new additions. While the likes of Jose Aldo and Dominick Cruz gained some attention as their WEC titles transformed into UFC gold, the rest of the division received little hype.
Quietly, the new weight classes made their debuts as part of the non-televised preliminary card at The Ultimate Fighter 12 finale back in December 2010. If it wasn’t for a botched decision during a main card bout later that night between Leonard Garcia and Nam Phan (the second featherweight fight in UFC history), the new weight classes probably wouldn’t have received more than just a passing mention by MMA pundits.
Even with the addition of the flyweight division during this year’s four-man tournament, the UFC still hasn’t done that great of a job of hyping its lighter weight classes.
Luckily, the UFC has learned from its past mistakes.
The promotion is putting Rousey and the women’s division at the forefront of fans minds through constant exposure. When these two women enter the Octagon for their pay-per-view-headlining fight at UFC 157 next year, rest assured that the UFC will go hard on marketing.
Not only is the UFC leading the way for female fighters, but it’s also helping the entire sports world take a step forward by showing them that women and men can harmoniously compete under the same banner.
While it wasn’t the hoped-for matchup with Cris Cyborg, White promised that matchup with Rousey would come next as long as she emerged from UFC 157 victorious. “That was obviously the fight we wanted to make at 135 pounds,” White said. “We worked hard to make that fight. I believe that this fight will happen and I truly believe the next fight will be the Cyborg one.” [Ed. note: Not that Dana doesn’t have the utmost confidence in you, Liz.]
A five-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Carmouche’s career MMA record stands at 7-2, with both losses coming last year, in back-to-back Strikeforce matches against Marloes Coenen and Sarah Kaufman. Carmouche rebounded impressively this year, scoring stoppage wins over Ashleigh Curry and Caitlin Young under the Invicta banner.
Though she’s been publicly angling for a matchup with Rousey in recent weeks, Liz Carmouche is one of the last people you’d expect to be headlining a UFC pay-per-view card in early 2013. But as is often the case with UFC title fights lately, the booking was motivated by a lack of options. Said White:
(Visual proof of this whole “lady UFC champion” thing, via @MikeChiappetta)
While it wasn’t the hoped-for matchup with Cris Cyborg, White promised that matchup with Rousey would come next as long as she emerged from UFC 157 victorious. ”That was obviously the fight we wanted to make at 135 pounds,” White said. “We worked hard to make that fight. I believe that this fight will happen and I truly believe the next fight will be the Cyborg one.” [Ed. note: Not that Dana doesn’t have the utmost confidence in you, Liz.]
A five-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Carmouche’s career MMA record stands at 7-2, with both losses coming last year, in back-to-back Strikeforce matches against Marloes Coenen and Sarah Kaufman. Carmouche rebounded impressively this year, scoring stoppage wins over Ashleigh Curry and Caitlin Young under the Invicta banner.
Though she’s been publicly angling for a matchup with Rousey in recent weeks, Liz Carmouche is one of the last people you’d expect to be headlining a UFC pay-per-view card in early 2013. But as is often the case with UFC title fights lately, the booking was motivated by a lack of options. Said White:
“Let me put it to you this way,” he said. “You ask me these questions and I tell you truth. A lot of people don’t like the truth when I say it but that’s who wanted to fight her. People aren’t kicking the doors down at Zuffa to fight her.”
Rousey added: ”I can’t make these girls fight me when I want them to fight me. I got a lot of respect for Liz. She’s the only one that really stepped up and said she really wanted this fight right now. That speaks a lot towards her. When the other girls come around and actually want to come to the big show, they know where I’m at.”
Kudos to the UFC for being committed to its women’s MMA experiment — and not burying its inaugural women’s fight in the co-main event spot of a FUEL card — but it’s a risky move, especially when one of the fighters involved is a relative unknown to casual fans. All the UFC can do is hope that Rousey vs. Carmouche turns out to be a thrilling war that turns more fans onto women’s MMA — or at least ends in a violent stoppage that they can show on SportsCenter.
Worst case scenario? Carmouche wins in a slow five-rounder. Obviously, that would still be a pretty solid outcome for Liz, but if it goes down like that, you can expect the UFC to suddenly lose interest in promoting women — which, let’s face it, was only about one specific woman all along, and the potential superfight that will be a lot more profitable than this one.
New UFC women’s champion @rondarousey will fight Liz Carmouche in the main event of UFC 157.— Jeremy Botter (@jeremybotter) December 6, 2012
And with that women have arrived in the UFC.Ronda Rousey will headline alongside Liz Carmouche in…
New UFC women’s champion @rondarousey will fight Liz Carmouche in the main event of UFC 157.
Ronda Rousey will headline alongside Liz Carmouche in the first ever women’s championship bout under the UFC banner, and Rousey will be the automatic champion of the division.
Carmouche is coming off back-to-back victories in Invicta FC. While the focus will be on Rousey, Carmouche should not be left in the background. The former Marine and Strikeforce title challenger brings in a solid all-around game.
This is how the first ever UFC Women’s Championship fight breaks down.
Was somebody at br.ufc.com having a little joke last night — or did they reveal something they weren’t allowed to yet? Whatever the case, the UFC’s official Brazilian website briefly posted a link to UFC 157: Rousey vs. Cyborg, the women’s superfight that remains too good to be true.
Cris Cyborg immediately denied the match was happening, telling MMAJunkie that while she is currently negotiating with the UFC, she won’t be meeting Ronda Rousey at the February 23rd event in Anaheim. But in violation of her strict doctor’s orders, the former Strikeforce’s 145-pound women’s champ revealed that she could indeed get down to 135 pounds eventually: “In one month, I can’t do it, but if I have time, I could do it,” Cyborg said, perhaps miscalculating the amount of time between now and 2/23.
Was somebody at br.ufc.com having a little joke last night — or did they reveal something they weren’t allowed to yet? Whatever the case, the UFC’s official Brazilian website briefly posted a link to UFC 157: Rousey vs. Cyborg, the women’s superfight that remains too good to be true.
Cris Cyborg immediately denied the match was happening, telling MMAJunkie that while she is currently negotiating with the UFC, she won’t be meeting Ronda Rousey at the February 23rd event in Anaheim. But in violation of her strict doctor’s orders, the former Strikeforce’s 145-pound women’s champ revealed that she could indeed get down to 135 pounds eventually: “In one month, I can’t do it, but if I have time, I could do it,” Cyborg said, perhaps miscalculating the amount of time between now and 2/23.
The two major themes in the UFC on Wednesday was the deflating news of Forrest Griffin pulling out of UFC 155 due to a knee injury and the swirling rumors that Cyborg Santos and Ronda Rousey were going to be fighting at UFC 157. According to MMAJunkie,…
The two major themes in the UFC on Wednesday was the deflating news of Forrest Griffin pulling out of UFC 155 due to a knee injury and the swirling rumors that Cyborg Santos and Ronda Rousey were going to be fighting at UFC 157.
According to MMAJunkie, the rumors of the fight between Rousey and Santos are false.
Santos on Wednesday told MMAjunkie.com that a notice on the UFC’s Portguese-language website announcing a fight between the women at UFC 157 is the “wrong information.”
She did, however, say that negotiations for the fight are underway, and said that she could fight at 135 pounds.
“In one month, I can’t do it, but if I have time, I could do it,” said Santos, who added that her management is currently negotiating with the UFC.
Many believe a fight between Rousey and Santos could be at least a co-main event on a pay-per-view card. Rousey is considered to be the best female fighter in the world, and many fans are anxious to see if Santos can overpower Rousey and avoid the armbar.
There was a good read earlier in the week from our very own James MacDonald regarding the potential sustainability of a women’s division in the UFC. The organization may be throwing all their eggs in one basket if they start things off by matching up Rousey and Santos instead of letting them both have one fight leading up to them crossing paths.
Of course, there is always the risk of them both losing before facing each other and stopping the Women’s MMA momentum completely.
Joe Chacon is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report and a staff writer for Operation Sports. You can follow him on Twitter @JoeChacon.
Ronda Rousey and the biggest hype train the UFC has promoted in quite some time will be blowing through the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA in February for UFC 157.
