Gina Carano and the “L” Word

Gina Carano and the “L” Word

By James Frederick William Rowe

On the Eve of Strikeforce’s largest event ever, one question has to be asked:

What if Gina Carano is “the L” word?

No, you ninnies, I don’t mean whether Carano is a lesbian. Rather, what if she is something far less marketable: A “Lutter”?

We all know the story of Travis Lutter. The Ultimate Fighter 4: The Comeback winner has the dubious distinction of having missed out on the title shot against Anderson Silva he won by virtue of not making weight for the bout. But how is this relevant? Well, if you look back at Carano’s career, we see a history of refusal to make weight. Four of her six fights have seen her not make weight. To the rigorous support of her male fan-base, she even had to strip completely nude to make weight against Kobold. What happens when history repeats itself for a fifth time and Carano doesn’t make weight with a belt on the line?

Worse: What if she doesn’t make weight for her title shot on Saturday?

What happens is this: Female MMA dies if Carano fails to make weight tonight. The failure of the marquee match up in the female division for the inaugural US woman’s title to materialize will bury the entire division. Likewise, if she attains the championship and fails to make weight during her reign, say goodbye to girl fights. Women’s MMA is all ready a niche interest and it won’t take much to turn it from “niche” into “non-existent”. One big fiasco, like a cancelled title fight due to weight, is enough to tip the scales – no pun intended – and send lady fighters to the unemployment office.

What compounds this issue is that Christiane Santos ain’t too much better than Carano! The shameful spectacle with her last opponent, Hitome Akano, had Santos outweigh her opponent by 5.5 pounds under the convenient excuse of lady troubles. Such a ridiculous lack of professionalism was made worse by the pressure put against Akano whom seemingly was forced to consent to taking on a woman who outweighed her by an obscene amount of weight come fight time.

Why has Strikeforce put itself in this sort of position? Do they not recognize the risk of running their division based on these two habitual over-weighters? There are no catchweight title bouts, so the option of pressuring opponents to concede to title fights is not there. If you miss weight, the fight is degraded from title to non-title and loses luster in the process. Do they really think they can manage to do enough damage-control when they not only put these gals on their cards, but make them headliners?

Strikeforce is a savvy business which may soon eclipse the UFC as the top MMA organization in the world with CBS deal and their signing of Fedor Emelianenko. But the undue attention given to female MMA and the corner they have pushed themselves into regarding Carano and Cyborg’s weight issues gives reason to suggest that Strikeforce might come up short in the race after all in this race to the top. If they stumble the UFC can easily maintain its sizable lead on MMA domination in America and that spells ill for Strikeforce, which really needs to be the place for MMA to succeed as an organization.

Scott Coker, if you want to be the man to beat the UFC, you have to do two things. First, send both these ladies to Weight Watchers regardless of the outcome of the fight. Second, start promoting great fights like Mousasi v. Babalu as the real main events so that you don’t have to contend with the unknowns of your female division and its niche status clouding out what more people will really want to tune in for.

I also have a message to Carano and Santos: Do your job. There are no excuses left for either of you anymore. This is your big chance. Don’t screw it up.