Someone Give These Girls A Fight!
By Yael Grauer on Jul 09, 2009
2009 hasn’t been all that bad for women’s MMA. Bellator, Strikeforce, Valkyrie, Shooto and DEEP haven’t been the only games in town. We saw HookNShoot put on the G-Fight Summit, and women fighting for a ton of other promotions including Fight Force, Combat USA, Beast of the East, CMF, UCFC, PFC, Ultimate Female Throwdown and Extreme Challenge.
Although the spotlight is fixed firmly on Gina Carano (and Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos by association), female fight fans everywhere have gotten to watch (or at least read about) bouts featuring some of the best: Rosi Sexton, Megumi Fuji, Tara LaRosa, Sarah Kaufman, Marloes Coenen, Erin Toughill, Shayna Baszler, Sally Krumdiak. Notably absent from the action, however, were two of my favorite fighters, Roxanne Modafferi and Amanda Buckner. Both are ready to rumble and looking for a fight.
Roxanne Modafferi (pictured above) is the Fatal Femmes Fighting Lightweight Champ and the IFC World Middleweight Champ. Roxy’s record is 13-4 and includes notable wins over some serious badasses, including Jennifer Howe, Vanessa Porto and Marloes Coenen. Her fighting style is dynamic and exciting, which is why I have no idea why she hasn’t been offered a fight since November 2008… Modafferi lives in Japan, but it’s not like promoters don’t fly people in from all over the world. Fatal Femmes Fighting flew her in and sooner or later, some lucky promoter is going to follow suit. I feel sorry for Roxy’s future opponents because they’ll have a battle on their hands.
Amanda Buckner is the IFC US Middleweight Champ and has a record of 11-5-1. She runs the Academy of Mixed Martial Arts in Portland, Maine along with her husband, MMA fighter Jay Jack. Buckner won the Ring of Fire Women’s Lightweight Championship back in 2005 and the Smack Girl Openweight Championship in 2006. This jiu jitsu player’s been around for a long time, and yet she hasn’t had success in finding a fight since April 2008. What is wrong with people?
It’s been posited that Buckner doesn’t have the “right look” for MMA, which is just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. This isn’t pillow fighting, people. I mean, I hate to be rude but we’re talking about a sport in which people pay good money to see men like Keith Jardine. Why? Because they can fight. And don’t get me started on Clay Guida. Seriously.
Roxy’s manager, Shu Hirata, can be reached at shu@boutreviewusa.com, and Amanda’s manager can be reached at academyofmma@gmail.com.
And while I’m at it, although Tara LaRosa has had a couple of fights this year we can’t get enough of this her. I mean, the girl’s been been fighting since 2002 and has ammassed a record of 17-1. She’s on a fourteen-fight winning streak–her last loss was in 2003! LaRosa, the first and final BodogFIGHT champion at 135 lbs., has recently expressed her desire to clear out the 125 lb division. Tara is obviously one of the top female fighters in the world and arguably the toughest. Why high-level promoters aren’t beating down her door is beyond me because she is the real deal. Here’s hoping we’ll get to see these tough ladies fight sometime real soon.
Filed Under: MMA
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You need to do some research on Lana Stefanac.
There is hardly anyone in her weight class. Who’s she gonna fight at 210 lbs? Hiroko?
Availability isn’t the issue, it’s talent. Give her a catch weight or absolute fight.. Dream could do it. She submitted her way through the heavyweights and the absolutes this year at the Mundials, and beat Kyra Gracie in the final 5-2. Her striking is phenomenal, and no ones even managed to get her in trouble in her 7 MMA fights..
I can’t think of anybody that would fight her.
I agree Lana is a great fighter, but the pool of talented heavyweight women fighters is small by nature and comparison. That being said, I am from the days before weight classes (which at 265lbs ripped was to my benefit), and feel that the catch weight idea is valid. Or, if allowed and sanctioned, allowing a fighter from a lower weight class that can not be beaten in their class to fight, if one is looking for a challenge. Another avenue for her could be something I have not followed and know nothing about, the proposed male vs female fights? I do not know how that is viewed by the commission, but personally I believe that the only way that will come about and make it to mainstream promotions would be for a board of experts (a questionable term at best) to use specific male/female criteria in both sedentary folks and fighters such as upper/lower body strength ratios, relative muscle fiber and bone density per pound, average striking power and maximum contractile strength per pound, etc to create a fight weight chart for a male vs female class. I don’t really know if that is a good idea; that is up to the fighters, fans and commission to ponder. An age based pro masters division becoming mainstream long before the male/female idea is more likely. So the 2 big hurdles for Lana remain, finding the smaller fighter willing to take the fight, and the fight being approved… There is little doubt that this is the year Women’s MMA is taking giant leaps forward “finally” and hopefully financially. I hope to see all the fighters in all weight classes get the respect and pay they have been waiting so long to get.
However, the reason for my visit to this article is to ask the same question as the author… Why are we not seeing Roxanne Modafferi fighting regularly on promotions such as Strikeforce? Her name is not “that” hard to spell, she has a proven fight record, is extremely entertaining and willing to fly across the world for a good fight! She is also in a very popular weight class. It is a crime that she is not on the card set for August 15th. That event is going to be a tremendous leap forward for Women’s MMA. In looking at the Strikeforce history of stepping up to the plate, their planning, excellent strategy and ability to put together the fights that fans want to see, I just can not believe Modafferi is not on that card. A match between Roxanne Modafferi and Shayna Baszler would have been perfect if Roxanne had been given time to prep for it (and Baszler had not fought so recently)… Could Strikeforce still put that one together and make it happen by August 15th? I think so… If the fans want it and let them know NOW! *** Take one minute of your time, go to their website today and tell them you want to see it, Strikeforce has proven that they care and listen to the fans.***
There’s isn’t a commission official in North America who will even talk about mixed fights. Maybe in Japan. She spars often with men in her size range, and more than holds her own. As for the observation that no one will fight her, that’s perfectly true. I tried for 2 years to get her fights, and we did get a few early on.. but word spread fast (it’s not a big community), and offers dried up. The shame is one of the best female fighters on the planet is relegated to coaching.
Yeah, it is really sad… I know a lot of women will fight at a catch weight, but usually it is when they are at least somewhat close in size. It’d be crazy to fight at a catchweight if the other person outweighs you by more than say 30 lbs IMO.
As far as women fighting men… It has certainly happened. Sunshine Fettketther (sp) in boxing, Molly Helsel beat a guy in BJJ, etc. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5615976419910054798
I’d want the guy to weigh a little less for sure just to account for strength. I’m not sure it’d be commissioned either.
The weight thing is such an issue for women in combat sports… There is a BJJ STATE tournament in AZ this weekend that hundreds of people have signed up for, and only 14 women. In fact there weren’t even women’s divisions set up for brown and black belts, and no female purple belts signed up. In the white belt women’s division, nobody at all signed up at 118 or 152. And in the blue belt division nobody signed up at 129, 152, 163 or over 163. I was toying with the idea of signing up but heard everybody cuts a ton of weight for States and since I haven’t done a test run and have a heavy gi I’d have been the one woman at 152 with nobody to fight. It sucks for sure.
Aaron, I agree… Scott Coker, make it happen.