Female MMA - News and Info about female mma fighters like Cristiane Justino, Amanda Nunes, Rose Namajunas, Joanna Jędrzejczyk, Valentina Shevchenko, Jéssica Andrade and more MMA fighters.
Showing posts with label female mixed martial arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label female mixed martial arts. Show all posts
Like a lot of other female MMA fighters, Filipino-American Ana Julaton started out as a female boxer.
As a boxer, Ana has a 14-4-2 record.
But in 2014, she signed a contract with ONE FC to fight in MMA for them.
Not without reason though, Ana has a black belt in Bok Fu and also a black belt in Taekwondo.
Her current MMA record is 2-2-0 and her last MMA fight was in 2015.
Ana was born on July 5th, 1980 in San Francisco, California.
Last night was Invicta FC 7: Honchak vs. Smith at the United States Ameristar Casino Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri.
There was a ton of good fights and to quickly recap.... Barb Honchak defeated Leslie Smith Lauren Murphy beat Miriam Nakamoto Tecia Torres won over Felice Herrig Joanne Calderwood defeated Katja Kankaanpää Julia Budd beat Charmaine Tweet Vanessa Porto defeated Zoila Frausto Gurgel Tonya Evinger beat Sarah D'Alelio Nina Ansaroff won over Munah Holland
The Barb Honchak vs. Leslie Smith fight was awarded "Fight of the Night" and Nina Ansaroff earned "Knockout of the Night" in her victory over Munah Holland. And the bout that won "Knockout of the Night" was on the Preliminary Card. I imagine that Nina "The Strina" Ansaroff will be moving up in the rankings....
In the last post I said that on July 13, 2013 at Invicta FC 6, Marloes "Rumina" Coenen will take on Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino for the first Invicta FC Featherweight Championship. But that's just scratching the surface of what will be going on at FC 6. There will be 13 matches with some of the best in female mixed martial arts in the world, including four of the top ranked featherweight female MMA fighters.
Marloes Coenen vs. Cristiane Santos Claudia Gadelha vs. Ayaka Hamasaki Sarah D'Alelio vs. Lauren Taylor Leslie Smith vs. Jennifer Maia Jessica Penne vs. Nicdali Rivera-Calanoc Joanne Calderwood vs.TBA. Ediane Gomes vs. Julia Budd Bec Hyatt vs. Mizuki Inoue Miriam Nakamoto vs. Duda Yankovich Tecia Torres vs. Rose Namajunas Ashley Cummins vs. Emily Kagan Mollie Estes vs.Veronica Rothenhausler Cassie Robb vs. Livia Von Plettenberg
So it looks like on July 14th I will be changing a lot of win-loss records on blogs.....
At Invicta FC 6 on July 13th, 2013 at the Ameristar Casino Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, Marloes Coenen (21-5-0) will be taking on Cristiane Justino (11-1-0) who was of course formerly known as Cris "Cyborg" Santos.
This match is the main event and will be a rematch.
The two last fought back at Strikeforce - Miami on January 30th, 2010.
To me this match is kind of a deal breaker for Cris.
If she wins, it proves that it wasn't steroids but skill that gave her all of those victories.
But even if she loses, it may just mean that Marloes was better that day.
Ms. Coenen is by no means a slouch.
Who do I think will win?
Please...if you look back at this blog you will see I cannot call a fight to save my life!
I'll just have to wait and see like everyone else.
The card will also feature almost every major female MMA fighter around that hasn't been snatched up by the UFC (it still feels funny typing that) including...
Veronica Rothenhausler, Rose Namajunas, Lauren Taylor, Jessica Penne, Bec Hyatt, Leslie Smith, Julia Budd and many more.
On April 5th, 2013 at the Ameristar Casino Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri they held Invicta FC 5: Penne vs. Waterson.
This was notable for several reasons....
One, we had the return of Michelle Waterson "The Karate Hottie" (11-3) after a six month layoff and she defeated Jessica Penne (10-2).
Both ladies are very popular on this blog with good reason.
They are both lovely AND skilled.
Michelle won via Submission (Armbar) in 2:31 of the 4th round.
Also we had the return of Cristiane Justino (11-1), who you may know better as Cris "Cyborg" Santos.
Cris defeated Fiona Muxlow (6-3) in 3:46 of the first round via TKO.
There were a ton of other events on the card as well....
Barb Honchak defeated Vanessa Porto
Sarah Kaufman defeated Leslie Smith
Jennifer Maia defeated Zoila Frausto Gurgel
Lauren Taylor defeated Kaitlin Young
Julia Budd defeated Mollie Estes
Bec Hyatt defeated Jasminka Cive
Simona Soukupova defeated Cassie Rodish
Miriam Nakamoto defeated Jessamyn Duke
Katja Kankaanpää defeated Juliana Carneiro Lima
Rose Namajunas defeated Kathina Catron
Alex Chambers defeated Jodie Esquibel
Coming up at Invicta FC 6...Marlos Coenen will be taking on "Cyborg" to crown the first Invicta FC Featherweight Champion.
That will take place in July of this year.
Besides being a pro MMA fighter, Nicdali Rivera-Calanoc has been a runway model and a ring girl.
The "Night Queen" had her first pro MMA fight on March 10th, 2006 against Sarika Patel at ACF - Showdown at Sundown which she won via TKO.
Nicdali's last fight was a win over Angelica Chavez at Invicta FC 2 - Baszler vs. McMann on July 28th, 2012 which she won by Unanimous Decision.
Her current MMA record is 8-6-0.
If you are like me, you probably remember Elaina “Beef” Maxwell from Strikeforce's first female MMA fight against Gina Carano on December 8th, 2006.
Although she lost the fight via Unanimous Decision, she has since gone on to a 7-4-0 record and is currently on a three win in a row streak.
Elaina is currently ranked number seven in the Unified Women's MMA Rankings 145-pound female MMA fighter category.
Her last fight was a win over Ashley Sanchez (4-3-0) at RFA 2 - Yvel vs. Alexander on March 30th, 2012 at the United States Viaero Event Center in Kearney, Nebraska.
Yana Kunitskaya was born on November 11th, 1989 in Murmansk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
She is five foot eight, 145 pounds and is trained in Taekwondo and Sambo.
Her current MMA record is 8-1-0.
So far during her MMA career she has held the 2007 UKADO World Championship, the 2007 Russian Taekwondo Championship, the 2010 Bushido Women's MMA Championship and the 2011 Russian Muay Thai Championship.
You know I find it very hard to believe that I have done write ups on female MMA stars like Erin Toughill, Gina Carano and Cristiane Santos on this blog, but I have never done a write up on Japanese female mixed martial artist Megumi Fujii.
Megumi (Mega Megu) was born on April 26, 1974 in Okayama Prefecture, Japan.
As far as female MMA rankings go, MMARising.com has Megumi ranked number one on their Top 15 Women’s Pound-For-Pound Rankings, and the WAMMA has Megumi ranked number one in the Flyweight division.
Why?
Well it may have something to do with the fact that she is currently 19-0-0.
Yes, nineteen wins, no losses and no draws.
That's 16 submissions, and 3 decisions.
Of course with the exception of Lisa Ward, not many of her opponents are well known outside of Japan.
Megumi's fastest MMA fight was a submission over Dah Le Chon.
She took her out in 19 seconds in the first round with a RNC.
19 seconds?
Dah must have wondered why she even bothered to get out of bed that morning.....
Thirteen of Megumi's 16 fights have been won in the first round.
Megumi has a black belt in Judo and Jujutsu, and also fights in Sambo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments.
Megumi got her mixed martial arts training from Shooto veteran Hiroyuki Abe and MMA fighter and professional wrestler Josh Barnett.
She has also trained several MMA fighters including Hitomi Akano (15-6-0).
As you probably already know, Marloes Coenen dismantled Roxanne Modafferi in sixty five seconds at Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers event on November 7th.
She submitted Roxanne with an armbar, avenging her loss to Roxanne back at K - GRACE 1 in May of 2007.
Now the Dutch mixed martial artist has her sites set on Strikeforce's 145-pound women’s champion Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos.
The word is that the title fight may go down as early as the January 30 Strikeforce event in Miami, Florida.
Now what about Santos and Coenen?
I say if Cris keeps her upright and pounds away, she'll win being the better striker and more powerful.
But if Marloes can take her down, she might have a chance at submission.
And speaking of The Cyborg, both she and her husband Evangelista are expected to fight at Strikeforce's December 19th show at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.
No...not against each other.
The upcoming video game, EA Sports MMA may or may not have female MMA stars in it.
The game is due out in 2010, and I'm thinking that if they had any female mixed martial artisits lined up, we'd know it by know.
And now the feud between TNA Knockout Tara (formerly WWE Diva Victoria, Lisa Marie Varon) and Kim Couture is really on?
I thought this had the look of a pro wrestling angle when I first heard about it, but after their run in at TNA's Bound for Glory PPV, I'm pretty sure we're getting a "work" here.
(Even though Kim and Tara both told MMA websites that it was a "shoot" and not planned.)
The bad thing about this is that no matter how much I love female pro wrestling, you should not mix it and female MMA.
In a female MMA match, we know that the person that wins...really wins.
In a scripted pro wrestling match, the winner is already determined.
MMA does not need the idea that any of its bouts are fixed. There needs to be a wide, clean line between MMA and wrestling.
Now some pro wrestling showman ship wouldn't hurt any, but leave it there.
Kim will be taking on Kerry Vera on November 20th at the Strikeforce Challengers card in Kansas City Kansas.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say Kerry will win.
And finally from the British TV show GMTV, here is an appearance by female MMA fighter Rosi Sexton...
Erin Toughill was supposed to fight Marloes Coenen at Strikeforce's November 7th card, to see who would face Cris Santos, but the fight has been called due to Erin pulling out for undisclosed medical reasons. But word has it that Roxanne Modafferi will take Erin's place and fight Marloes. I wanted to see Erin who is 10-2-1 take on Marloes, who is 16-3, but Roxanne is certainly no slouch at 17-4-0, so it still should be a good fight. I hope whatever Erin's medical reason is, it isn't anything serious.
Also, the November 20th bout between Sarah Kaufman (10-0) and Takayo Hashi (12-1) has been put on hold till next year. The two were supposed to face off at "Strikeforce Challengers V: Woodley vs. Bears" but MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) has confirmed that the fight is off.
The card would have had two female MMA bouts with the other being Kim Couture taking on Kerry Vera. Kim is 1-1-0 and Kelly is 1-0-0. Wow...looks kinda like binary code.
And if you want to hit the motherlode of female MMA videos, point your browser to http://www.fightergirls.com/videos.asp, and sit down to watch 145 female mixed martial arts videos. Debi Purcell's site has once again outdone itself.
In the aftermath of the Gina Carano-Cris Santos fight, I was looking around for inspiration for today's entry. Here is a sample of the headlines I ran across.....
Do women belong fighting in mixed martial arts? Baltimore Sun
Does women's MMA have a future? Baltimore Sun (Do I sense a pattern with the Baltimore Sun here?)
Carano's loss to 'Cyborg' hurts women's MMA FOXSports.com
Strikeforce postmortem: Is Santos' win good for women's MMA? ESPN
Though growing, women's MMA not equal to men's Florida Today
Female MMA is far from accepted yet. I keep hearing terms like "not as good as the guys", "lack of depth", "women shouldn't be fighting each other". And of course "she's ugly, she looks like a man, I don't like her."
Wow. I thought we had outgrown that kind of thinking. No Cris Santos is not gonna get in the cage with Brock Lesnar. Just like Laila Ali has no business in the ring with Mike Tyson. But that doesn't mean Santos isn't great in her division. Maybe the WWE and their Diva division has poisoned the minds of sports fans to where they think that a woman cannot be just as good as a man. (perhaps Lisa Marie Varon will change that idea)
These ladies work just as hard as their male counterparts and should be treated with the same respect. I'm not saying we should praise sloppy execution in either division. The women should be (and from what I have seen are) held to the same standards. But no matter how good some female MMA stars are, they will be judged less than the guys and thats just not right.
Well here we go. Only five days till what is the most hyped female mma match ever. I love it really, when I started this blog back in 2007, I started going down a list I made of female mma fighters and tried to do bios and at least one pic of each one. Why? Because I always root for the underdog.
Female MMA really didn't get much attention, a lot of people frowned on it. Two women out there beating the crap out of each other didn't appeal to everyone. But having spent 14 years in martial arts (not MMA mind you) I had some idea of what these women go through to get out there and do their best. And I hate it when someone works that hard and gets overlooked. So I tried in my own way to get these ladies out there and hopefully get some attention for them.
You'll note that you don't (and never will) see pictures of bikini clad women here just for the sake of having them. Now if a fighter is good looking (Kyra Gracie, Gina Carano, Michelle Waterson, Erin Toughill, LaTasha Marzolla just to name a few) I have no problem with posting an attractive picture of them. But no matter how good you look, if you get in the ring with another woman that's there to take you down and take you out, it wont matter. This blog is for fighters both known and unknown.
And that brings me back to the upcoming match up. (I know I went off on a mini rant there) Here is a chance for female MMA to really shine and pick up some fans. You'll have the MMA poster girl Gina Carano going up against a fighting machine Cris Santos. As of right now, no one is injured and we can expect to see both women go in there and give everything they've got. This could be the match that really puts women's MMA on the map. There's already talk of the winner facing Erin Toughill at a future date.
So I wish both women luck and cross my fingers that the match will be as good as the hype leading into it.
Not only does the sport need a good show, but so do all those ladies out there in little known gyms pounding away at bags and wondering if they'll ever get the chance to climb into a ring and show everyone just how good they really are.
Well I keep trying but all I seem to come up with these days is Gina Carano/Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos stuff. Maybe I should just quit fighting and give into the hype. After all, it's only 12 days till showtime. (That wasn't a pun...really)
Anyway, word has come out now that Cristiane Santos is the odds on favorite to beat Gina on August 15th. And adding to that is Carano's ex-boyfriend Kit Cope coming out on MMAJunkie Radio saying that (to put it nicely) Gina is gonna get beat if she keeps training at (as he puts it) "Xtreme Fashion" with Shawn Tompkins and Randy Couture. Randy, by the way, will be in Gina's corner at the fight, but not long time friend Kim Couture. This has lead to the totally unfounded (as far as I can tell) rumor that Gina is seeing Randy. But think about it realistically a minute. You're in the fight of your life, who do you want in your corner? Mixed martial artist, Greco-Roman wrestler, former collegiate wrestler, and only five-time champion in UFC history Randy? Or 1-1-0 Kim? I'd go with Randy.
There's an article over at Bleacher Report by Josh Sanchez about the idea of bringing Kyra Gracie over to Strikeforce's women's division, which I think is a very good idea.
And speaking of Srikeforce, they have put a video up promoting the ( I know, I cant even go a week without saying it) Gina “Conviction” Carano vs. Chris “Cyborg” Santos fight.
The MMA promotion "MMA Big Show" had a 16 round card Saturday night (Saturday July 25th) called Unstoppable and on that card, Big Show had their first female mixed martial arts bout. It was Erica Ellington, a freestyle fighter, took on Marissa Caldwell, a jiu jitsu specialist. Marissa defeated Erica with an armbar at 2:33 of the first round. (They didnt need a five minute round did they?)
FightLife is an upcoming female MMA reality show from Warm Springs Productions.
From the website..... "FightLife bases a group of eight professional female fighters in one house where they live, breathe and make their money off the sport of Mixed Martial Arts fighting. The series will focus on the girls’ real lives – hardcore partying, the drama, catfights, relationships, owning and operating fight shop, intense physical training led by Ken Shamrock, and their professional MMA fights."
I couldn't find out anything on when or where it will air.
Of course this isn't the first female MMA reality TV show. Oxygen did Fight Girls back in 2007 and Ultimate Women’s Combat is set to air on NBC in 2009 or 2010.
Okay, I was gonna try to go for a bit without mentioning Gina Carano and Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos and their upcoming fight. But right now, all eyes seem to be turned towards this.
Crave Online has an article about the match up, as does The Las Vegas Sun, The Examiner, ESPN and a host of others. This is looking to be the defining moment (so far) in female mixed martial arts. Finally the women get the coverage and recognition that the men get.
Could it all blow up in their faces? Oh yes, easily. A bad fight and all the hype and build up will go down the drain with a loud SWOOSH! But a good fight, and the hype will be justified and we may just see a turning point in female MMA. I would hate to be Carano or Santos right now, because even though their opponents are their top priority, you know the media pressure has got to be in the back of their minds.
I mentioned the Hitomi Akano versus Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Santos match on April 11 in a previous post. But now I hear that Josh Barnett will be in Akano's corner. This would make sense since Akano is one of Josh's students. Should an upset happen....what would happen to the anticipated Gina Carano / Santos fight?
The Akano / Santos fight will air on Showtime as part of their Strikeforce premier. You can find out more about ths Showtime event here: http://strikeforce.sho.com/
It looks like the Gina Carano / Cristian "Cyborg" Santos fight could happen in August at the Strikeforce show. If it happens, the fight will most likely air on Showtime or CBS.
Kim Couture will be on the May 15 "ShoMMA: Strikeforce Challengers," acrd facing an undetermined as of yet opponent.
Kyra Gracie won the Absolute and Lightweight divisions last year at the 2008 Womens Brown/Black Belt World Champions. She is said to be competing at the April 18th New York International Open Jiu-Jitsu Championship in New York, but I haven't seen confirmation of this yet.
At the April 11 in “Extreme Beatdown” at Apache Gold Casino, Michelle “The Karate Hottie” Waterson will be facing MMA and boxing star Elena “Baby Doll” Reid in a special female 112-pound catch-weight attraction bout..
And Tara LaRosa won her MMA fight with Sally Krumdiak at Atlantic City's Trump Marina with a third round submission. Tara's next fight is tentatively scheduled for May 30 in Atlantic City or June 14 in Birmingham, Alabama.
I didn't know a lot about Felice Herrig when I did my first entry on her back in 2007. Then she was on Oxygen's reality series "Fight Girls". At the time she was a 22 year old, working at a salon in Wheeling, giving facials, manicures and pedicures. Gina Carano mentored Felice and she won her first fight against Gina Reyes. As one of the five finalists in Thailand, Felice won her fight against a champion Thai fighter.
She recently lost a three round, split decision to Iman "Mannie" Achhal at UWC 5: MAN "O" WAR in Fairfax Virginia. But she is now looking forward to her next fight at XFO 29 on Friday April 17, 2009.
