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As women in kickboxing and MMA has been growing by leaps and bounds throughout the world, New Zealand promoter Belinda Dunn has been helping these fighters have a platform.

Dunn has been promoting female fights for eight years, having some main stream success down under and Europe. She reorganized her league into “Princesses of Pain” (POP) in 2007. Fighters such as Amanda Lucas, Van Do, and ADCC participant Fiona Muxlow have been on the POP cards. Dunn will be holding her 19th card as promoter Nov. 5 called “Fawksey Ladies”.

We talked to Dunn about POP and where women’s MMA and kickboxing stands in the southern hemisphere.

Wombat Sports: How did “Princesses of Pain” come about?

Belinda Dunn: Princesses of Pain had a slow start which was intentional as I needed time to learn and educate myself. Finally I feel like we are in a place of strength and now I’m ready to show the world more of what the Princesses can do.

The Nov. 5 event is a development card, giving lots of new fighters the chance to be on an event along side some advanced ladies. I love this concept and thankfully our audience enjoy the mix.

WS: From what you have seen, has the crowd been when they see women’s fights?

BD: When POP started our audience was mostly men. Now it’s 50/50 with the women’s part of the crowd being the loudest by far. We sell out at every show and really need to move to a bigger venue, but I don’t think we would full it if we did and the move would be expensive. POP is very TV based we certainly have the view that we want bigger exposure for our fighters so right or wrong my focus is on creating more great TV footage more than on crowd numbers.

POP Nicole Kavangh vs. Amanda Lucas 2008

Wombat Sports: How is the women’s fighting scene in New Zealand?

Dunn: The fight scene for women in NZ is growing really fast. We have always had a large number of strong Thai fighters but now the numbers of MMA fighters is building also. We do lack the fight experience some of the American ladies have as MMA is pretty new to us but we are catching up quickly and the great thing for me is that so many women are crossing over from Thai and BJJ into MMA. So to sum up we are behind in experience but we are seeing great growth in numbers and NZ fighters are clocking up fights quickly.

WS: What are you hoping to accomplish with the card?

BD: With this card I am trying to show that POP cares about the novice and intermediate fighters and not just the elite. We have so many great ladies who are experienced and its easy to get wrapped up in promoting them but we need to look after the next generation of fighters also. Having said that I am looking at options for bringing more American women to NZ so our elite fighters can gain the experience of fighting them. For those who don’t know POP is an international league we bring fighters from all over the world to compete here and are always searching for how to we can do it more often than we currently do.

WS: Tell us a little about the fighters on the card.

BD: The most experienced fighter on this card has had 16 fights and our least experienced fighter is a 14 year old girl who is entering the ring for the first time. Having the babies (any fighter under 20) on this card is a really big deal for me as I have always been very protective of the younger girls and until now no fighters under 20 have fought on a POP night event. The babies have been asking to fight for a long time and I had started letting them spar on the day shows, so this is the next step I guess. I will have some of our champions on the next night card which will be in a couple of months. The next day event is Dec 11th.

WS: Anyone you want to thank?

BD: Only the fighters. Running a female fight league is really hard. There are still so many biases against us. I cant get sponsors and I have to self fund every show. I don’t have enough money to hirer staff yet we are far to busy for one person to keep up with everything. The Princesses really are amazing. The help where they can they try to cut costs they email me encouragement continuously and they work really hard at educating eh public about what our sport and POP is. I cant thank them enough, I could not do it if they were not so wonderful. I am fighting every day in every way I know how to give the Princesses what I know they deserve and to show people how amazing I know they are.

Thankfully the future of POP is looking very bright, it’s because of you Princesses.

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