Women's mixed martial arts
| Focus | Various |
|---|---|
| Hardness | Full contact |
| Olympic sport | No - not recognized by the IOC |
While mixed martial arts is primarily a male dominated sport, it does have female athletes. Female competition in Japan includes promotions such as DEEP Jewels. Now defunct promotions that featured female fighters were Valkyrie, and Smackgirl. Professional mixed martial arts organizations in the United States that invite women to compete are industry leader Ultimate Fighting Championship, the all female Invicta Fighting Championships, Resurrection Fighting Alliance, Bellator Fighting Championships, and Legacy Fighting Championship. Now defunct promotions that featured female fighters were Strikeforce and EliteXC.
There has been a growing awareness of women in mixed martial arts due to popular female fighters and personalities such as Gina Carano, Ronda Rousey, Megumi Fujii, Miesha Tate and Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos among others. Carano became known as "the face of women's MMA" after appearing in a number of EliteXC events. This was furthered by her appearances on MGM Television's 2008 revival of their game show American Gladiators.
But it is Ronda Rousey, and UFC's decision to allow female fighters to compete because of her, that is often cited as the reason women's mixed martial arts became known to the general public. Rousey won the Best Fighter ESPY Award at the 2015 ESPN ESPY award's, beating out noted fighters such as Floyd Mayweather Jr., and becoming the first UFC and MMA fighter to win the award.
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