Double Standards, Women’s MMA, and the Way of the World

Alright, as a disclaimer, this post is going to sound excessively grouchy. Maybe that’s because I’ve already used up most of my weekly allowance of optimism on the UFC heavyweight division, and maybe it’s because I’ve been making this same argument over and over again since August of last year. Maybe it’s because I’m just generally a grouchy person. Anyway, that’s the warning.

I have a lot of friends who pick my brain about women’s MMA, especially because most of us are Strikeforce fans (they host promotions locally) and the introduction of women’s MMA in Strikeforce has definitely brought it into the consciousness of central and northern Californians who hadn’t really seen chicks fight until they saw Gina Carano (7-1 MMA). I’m glad that casual fans are interested. It’s great for women’s MMA, and given that I really like women’s MMA, I see it as a good thing.

There’s one subject that comes up an awful lot, though, and that’s Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos (9-1 MMA). I don’t mind talking about Cyborg. I like Cyborg. I think she’s a beast of a fighter, exciting to watch and really committed to MMA (which, honestly, can’t be said for everybody in MMA, male or female). But, for the most part, it’s not a conversation about how good Cyborg is, how her next matchups look and how long she’s going to hold onto the belt. It’s about how she looks, and that irritates me.

The double standard speaks for itself, and maybe it’s not totally out of place. It’s good to have a good looking spokesperson for a sport as it comes up. It was definitely helpful for MMA that Ken Shamrock didn’t look like Tank Abbott. It was definitely helpful that Rich Franklin is, as an ex-girlfriend once put it, pretty damn fine. It helps because charisma and good looks sell the sport. It seems disproportionate on the women’s side of things, and it probably is.

Here’s what bothers me, though:

Casual fans of MMA think that women’s MMA would be better off with a pretty face with solid skills than with someone like Cyborg, who’s appeal rests solely inside of the cage. That’s just not the case.

There will be charismatic spokespeople for women’s MMA. There are a number of excellent female fighters (especially in the lighter weightclasses) who can be both impressive in the cage and keep the attention of the skeptical outside of the cage, fighters who can sell the product to those who need to be sold. Rosi Sexton (10-1 MMA) is pretty much a female Rich Franklin, as far as I’m concerned; she’s smart, a monster in the cage and has the looks.

Cyborg doesn’t need to sell the product. She can (and will) be the competitor that everyone sort of knows about, and that the fans want to see in the cage, because of the performance she puts on.

Now, my friends who are casual fans always come back to the argument that Cyborg may turn away fans who are looking for something different (by which I assume they mean something between submission grappling and soft-core porn, though they tend to speak of it more euphemistically than that). To those fans, I will say what I have said to fans who want a ton of smack talk from the champs like Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva: MMA is not for you. Professional wrestling is probably more your speed.

We have smack talk in MMA. And there are some absolutely gorgeous women in women’s MMA (those who’ve talked to me about women’s grappling know that I have a schoolboy crush on a particular competitor).

But the draw isn’t the gorgeous women. The draw for women’s MMA is the same as the draw for men’s MMA. If the gender of the competitors distracts from the fight, then that’s a real problem for the viewer, and I’m not entirely sure I have a solution for that person, but (personally) I’d rather have an exciting, explosive fighter in the top position than someone who can look good in the pre-fight press conference and brings mediocrity to the cage.

In the cage, I’m looking for the clean left hook and the suplex, and I don’t really care if the fighter can do a centerfold for Playboy.