The Ultimate Fighting Championship faces many challenges other popular sports leagues do not.
Those issues include an extremely public and constant problem with performance enhancing drugs and a rigorous training regimen that frequently injures its top talents prior to major fights.
Another unique concern President Dana White and his company grapple with is marketing men’s and women’s mixed martial arts at the same time.
Saturday, women’s bantamweight champion and MMA star Ronda Rousey headlined UFC 170 in a matchup with Sara McMann. With the exception of one other fight, the rest of the bouts on the card took place between male fighters.
Having bouts between both genders on the same fight card doesn’t pose a problem, and it’s not unprecedented. Many other prominent fighting organizations, including Strikeforce and Bellator, did the same. However, the way the UFC goes about promoting its women’s fights and fighters hinders the image of the female iteration of the sport.
In 2011, TMZ’s paparazzi crew conducted a street interview with White. Nothing really stood out from the interview, until the reporter asked his final question as White walked into his car.
“When are we going to see women in the UFC, man?” the reporter asked White.
“Never,” White replied.
However, a year later, he did a complete 180 and created a women’s division. He even took Rousey to the restaurant outside which TMZ interviewed him that night to tell her she would be the first woman in the UFC and the organization’s first female champion.
Since then, marketing female fighters in a macho sport baffled White and the UFC. An article by Deadspin.com’s Tim Marchman Sunday night criticized the UFC’s treatment of Rousey in the lead up to the fight with McMann.
The overwhelming story line, two Olympic medalists fighting during the Olympics (albeit, the wrong season), promised a fight that simply had no chance of playing out anywhere but on paper. Rousey finished her previous eight opponents by armbar, and all but one of them submitted in the opening round. McMann, although talented, simply could not match Rousey.
Unsurprisingly, Rousey cruised to a first round victory when she kneed McMann in just the right spot (her liver) 1:04 into the fight.
However, the more serious issue is the UFC’s continual promotion and misrepresentation of Rousey and other female fighters’ sexuality.
When the women’s bantamweight division debuted in February 2013, White promoted the fight saying things like Rousey “is a guy in a women’s body.” As Deadspin’s Tomas Rios wrote at the time, White was “plainly equating masculinity with athleticism and echoing the lazy, gendered assumptions that render women’s sports as a sort of quaint distaff pantomime of the real thing.”
The pre-fight billing also essentially ignored Rousey’s opponent Liz Carmouche, mostly because she didn’t fit the sexualized framework the UFC promoted. Carmouche is an armed forces veteran with three tours of duty under her belt and is openly gay. In contrast to Rousey’s Maxim Top 100 image, Carmouche just didn’t matchup in the eyes of the UFC.
Unfortunately, not much changed a year later. Saturday afternoon, the UFC’s official Twitter account retweeted actor Marlon Wayans when he wrote this astonishing message:
“This is hot!!!! Girl on girl! #ufc @ufc @rondaroussey I just wanna smell her training gloves and feet wraps… Am I weird? Probably and probably not alone,” Wayans tweeted.
Moreover, UFC color commentator Joe Rogan ranted about how beautiful Rousey was as she exited the cage following her win.
Regardless of how the fights end up, the UFC clearly has some serious promotion issues in need of immediate resolution. The initially hesitant White cannot suddenly support women’s MMA only because sex sells and Rousey is attractive.
To run women’s and men’s MMA on the same UFC card, White and his company need to treat the women like athletes, not sex symbols. Only then will women’s MMA receive the respect from sports fans and media it deserves.
