Women’s MMA & Pro-wrestling Part 1 – The Introduction

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Gian Carano & Cyborg Santos Courtesy Ester Lin/Strikeforce

I, like most MMA fans, grew up on pro-wrestling. This was the closest thing we could get to real violence. Then came the UFC, and with it a revolution was born. “This is real wrestling!” MMA fans soon chimed. I never abandoned pro-wrestling although I was an MMA fan all the way back at UFC 2. I still like the drama and acrobatics of pro-wrestling. I even worked for a small wrestling promotion in the early part of the century. I never forgot my first love.

Gina Carano (left) vs. Kaitlin Young (right) EliteXC 2008

I soon became a fan women’s MMA though Gina Carano in 2008, like most people did. I gained appreciation for how hard they fought and the aggression they showed. So much in fact I started to cover it. Three years later, I have made a solid representation reporting on the ever growing sport.

Medusa (white) vs. Bull Nakano

Now with my love of pro-wrestling came a love of the female end of the sport. Medusa Micelli was the wrestler I grew up on. Athletic, talented, and charismatic, it was hard not to appreciate her as a wrestler. Those were the day when women actually wrestled, but we will get to that in a later article.

Let’s fast forward into 2011. Women’s MMA is starting to thrive and is one of the fastest growing women’s sports, as is the men’s division. So much in fact that former pro-wrestlers like Brock Lesnar, Bobby Lashley, and Dave Batsista dropped their pro-wrestling careers for MMA. On the converse, in the beginnings of MMA, fighters like Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock made the transition to pro-wrestling to earn a decent paycheck between fights.

Cyborg Santos Courtesy RevGear

When the rumors hit several weeks ago that Strikeforce champion Cyborg Santos maybe heading to the WWE, fans of the MMA world were perturbed. “It will cheapen her career,” people stated. I also started to do some commentary on the women’s pro wrestling end on my twitter, and was blasted with criticism. “Why are you covering it? It cheapens you as a women’s MMA journalist.” This got me to thinking about the relationship between women’s pro-wrestling and women’s MMA. So, I did some digging.

In the next few weeks, I will be writing a series of articles about the common history and general opinions on the two most aggressive women’s sports.  I interviewed several women’s pro-wrestlers, as well as several women’s MMA fighters about the subject, and where they stand when it comes to both sports.

Coming up next week in Part 2, we will detail women’s fighting sports origins, and where the split between MMA fighting and pro-wrestling began.

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