A Couple of Things

A couple of years ago, I spoke out about skirts being worn by female fighters such as Zoila Frausto. I was referring to the Roman soldier-style, plated skirts over tight-fitting shorts thing. I still believe these should not be allowed in the cage. As walkout attire, sure why not? But get down to your fighting gear before you enter the cage.

Lately I have noticed that some women, most notably Sarah Kaufman, have been wearing baggier ring attire. As I said before, if a gi is illegal, then such loose fitting clothing should also be outlawed. While I support the Go-Topless movement (in which women stand up for the right to be as bare chested as men) I believe it should remain optional, and so I have no interest in making the ladies fight in only a pair of shorts. This isn’t topless boxing, topless wrestling or even topless mma! An accidental “nipslip” is gonna happen every once in a while, it’s something every fighter has to accept. But it’s something that happens even with a gi, as we saw this year in Olympic judo.

Felice Herrig recently posted on her Facebook that she didn’t understand how women could fight wearing a sports bra, that she would be too afraid something would pop out. Putting aside the fact that the Lil Bulldog doesn’t really have anything to pop out, I put it to fighters that wearing tight fitting tops is likely better for you since your opponent will have a harder time grabbing material. It’s against the rules to grab your opponent’s shorts and, by extension, their top, but we see fighters break those rules all the time. If they can grab the back of your t-shirt out of the line of sight of the referee, they are going to do so.

If your clothes are too tight to get a hold of, it will also likely be difficult to even slip a finger in the seam to get a grip. And I would extend this to the men as well, who wear long or loose shorts. I’m not saying everyone should wear the tight shorts of George St-Pierre (though I wouldn’t be unhappy if they all did!) but it’s just smarter to wear tight fitting fight attire.

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The UFC has made a big deal of adding a flyweight division. This irks me somewhat for one very simple reason. What about the women?

A couple of years ago, Dana White was asked why the UFC doesn’t have a women’s division. In a very candid moment, he said it was because there are not enough good female fighters. I agreed with him. Then.

Thousands of women around the world have taken up mma since then. Many do so because the training is a good, full-body workout, and then they get hooked on the fighting aspect of it. Back then, you would probably have a difficult time coming up with a list of 20 women, across all weight classes. Now I believe we have top ten lists for each weight class.

Flyweights? Does anybody know any flyweights? I mean, aside from the bantamweights who dropped down. Where are they fighting? Women are fighting in Strikeforce. They are good enough to be on the national stage of Zuffa’s little brother. Bellator also stages female fights. But no major organization has flyweights. Until now. And I feel like it is a slap in the face to the female fighters who took to heart Dana White’s assertion that there wasn’t enough talent on the women’s side. These women have trained hard to prove to White that they can stand with the big boys. And he adds flyweights?

Hey Dana! There are a lot of female flyweights!

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