Women's mixed martial arts

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.^[1][2][3] For instance, Female competition in Japan includes promotions such as DEEP Jewels. Now defunct promotions that featured female fighters were Valkyrie, and Smackgirl.^[4] 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.^[5] There has been a growing awareness of women in mixed martial arts due to popular female fighters and personalities such as Amanda Nunes, Megumi Fujii, Gina Carano, Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Holly Holm and Joanna Jędrzejczyk and among others.^[6] Carano became known as "the face of women's MMA" after appearing in a number of EliteXC events.^[7][8][9] This was furthered by her appearances on MGM Television's 2008 revival of their game show American Gladiators.^{[10][11][12][13]}

The UFC's decision to allow female fighters in the organization, to promote the dominant fighter Ronda Rousey, is often cited as the reason women's mixed martial arts became known to the general public.^[14] Rousey won the Best Fighter ESPY Award at the 2015 ESPN ESPY awards, beating out noted fighters such as Floyd Mayweather Jr., and becoming the first UFC and MMA fighter to win the award.^[15]