Strikeforce: Women's MMA Needs Its Griffin-Bonnar This Weekend

In 2005 a fledgling organization by the name of Zuffa took money out of their pockets to produce a reality television show based around its mixed martial arts brand, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). It was as ballsy as it was costly, but the move paid off when the final of the tournament-style show, a contest between then-unknowns Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar, was one of the wildest brawls the sport has ever seen.

People were hooked, whether they were fans of the sport before or not.

Ratings blew up. Pay-per-view buyrates headed north. Mixed martial arts became an overnight success, a sport snapped from the jaws of oblivion on the power of one remarkable performance.

Now, six years later, another Zuffa property heads into another Saturday night with the same sort of pressure evident. Strikeforce, a former competitor of the UFC recently purchased by the parent company, holds one of the biggest fights in the company’s history when light heavyweight champion Dan Henderson moves up to fight legendary heavyweight star Fedor Emelianenko.

However the co-main event is where the pressure is.

Women’s welterweight champion Marloes (Rumina) Coenen will defend her title against Miesha (Takedown) Tate in a fight that many are suggesting will shape the future of women’s MMA in a way that Griffin/Bonnar did for the men. That is to say, it’s basically a sink-or-swim fight for their whole sport.

It’s no secret that Dana White, UFC president and Zuffa figurehead, is lukewarm on women’s MMA. He suggests that the talent pool is too shallow, and that the gap between those who are good and those who aren’t is just too wide. He also refutes the idea that there’s any money to be made there, and at the end of the day he’s doing what he does to make money.

At this stage in the game, Coenen-Tate is as big a fight as there is in women’s MMA. Hence why people are putting such pressure on the ladies involved—at least the people who see the marketability of women’s MMA and want to see it succeed.

Pound-for-pound female kingpin (and possibly legitimate overall pound-for-pound threat) Cristiane ‘Cyborg’ Santos is sidelined by murky contract negotiations at the moment, while the beautiful Gina Carano is in a state of semi-retirement due to an acting career that looks set to take off. Those are the two most marketable women in the sport, and neither one is even close to stepping in a cage at the moment.

That leaves Coenen and Tate, both of whom are incredibly gifted athletes, great fighters, and ladies who are easy on the eyes, to pick up the slack. No one else is near ready. That makes Saturday night a pretty big deal for them, and for their sport.

The interesting thing is that, while women’s MMA needs its Griffin-Bonnar, it doesn’t need that fight stylistically. MMA is to the point now where the sport isn’t on life support in North America, it doesn’t need two people standing in the middle of the cage going shot for shot until one falls down to make people care. People know what triangles and armbars are now, they understand (for the most part) the importance of being a good wrestler and controlling position, or how using a clinch against the cage can win a fight.

What women’s MMA needs on Saturday is just a good fight. Two evenly matched opponents who can do it all. It needs good standup action, submission attempts, escapes, slams, scrambles, and everything else that makes MMA entertaining. The definition of a ‘war’ has evolved since 2005, it doesn’t only encompass fights that have the front row splattered in blood by the end of the first round.

So when Coenen and Tate touch gloves and get down to business on Saturday night, as much as they’ll downplay it, they know what’s on the line. The Sword of Damocles is hanging over them, and a poor showing is one step closer to a firm reason for Dana White and company to scrap the ladies altogether when they officially merge Strikeforce with the UFC.

It’s a lot of pressure to have going into a fight. Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar didn’t know how important their fight was to the sport going into the cage, they just happened to put on a great show and change the sports world forever. If Marloes Coenen and Miesha Tate can do the same, knowing how important it is that they do going in, that in itself should be enough to warrant them sticking around for another while.

Regardless, women’s MMA will have its answer Saturday night in Chicago.