There has been a growing awareness of women in mixed martial arts due to popular female fighters and personalities such as Megumi Fujii, Gina Carano, Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Amanda Nunes and Joanna Jędrzejczyk and among others.
The UFC’s decision to allow female fighters in the organization, to promote the then dominant fighter Ronda Rousey, is often cited as the reason women’s mixed martial arts became known to the general public.
Strikeforce became the first major promotion in the United States to have held a female fight as the main event on August 15, 2009. The fight between Carano and Cristiane Santos attracted 856,000 viewers. Santos made history with her victory over Carano as she became the first Strikeforce Women’s 145 lb Champion.
In the State of Florida it is a known fact amongst the promoters that “Female Fights” sell tickets. The challenging part is to find female MMA fighters that have built up their amateur fighting carear, to then go Pro, and put on a good show for the fans.
In 2019 less then 1% made up fights in the State of Florida. Out of the 306 Pro Fighters who fought in Florida, only 16 were females. Making up 0.05% of the female fighter statistics.
Does Florida have a track record of amateur female fighters going Pro?There has been a line of successful amateur female fighters such as:
Valerie Lourda, who fought for Combat Night went Pro with Bellator.
Jessica “The Black Widow” Borga had 10 amateur fights before signing with 2 major companies – Titan FC and Bellator.
Claudia Zamora put her 5 fight winning streak as an amateur, to go Pro with spanish promoter Combate Americas.
Trisha Cicero who was undefeated in her amateur career at XFN went Pro with Titan Fighting Championship.
Moving up the amateur ranks is Anne Ribeiro, who is the daughter of MMA Fighter “BigFoot” Silva. Ribeiro has three fights with XFN and one with combat night. We llok forward to seeing what she can do in the Pro league.
It doesn’t look like Florida is short of female amateur fighters, its turning Pro and making it a career that might be low in numbers. Question would be, How many amateur female fighters go Pro and when they do, How many go on to make it a career and fight for Big Promotions…and how many just stop for what ever reason?
We will be watching to see if in 2020 there is an increase in female fighters in Florida. It truly falls on the Gym’s and the passion and desire of the fighter to be one.
