Women Oriented Mixed Martial Arts

Women Oriented Mixed Martial Arts

Mixed martial arts is a combat sport where competitors try to achieve dominance over each other by applying wide variety of martial arts techniques, including grappling and striking. Other martial arts have their basis in either grappling techniques such as pinning holds, clinch holds, sweeps, submission holds, takedowns and throws or striking techniques such as punches and kicks, MMA combines several diverse aspects of fighting. MMA training poses whole new challenges to the body as it is different from the conventional run on the treadmill workouts. MMA originated from ancient Greek Olympic sport pankration that combined grappling and striking.


Mixed martial arts is a game of very few rules, and all of these rules were established in last ten years. Women in MMA compete in various formats, both on the ring and in the cage. Eye-gouging, biting, forearm strikes, elbow strikes, head butting, hair pulling, kicking, pressure point techniques, small joint manipulation, kneeing or kicking the head of downed opponent and striking the spine, throat or groin are some of the usual illegal techniques used by MMA fighters. Currently, women MMA is covered by International Sport Combat Federation, and this federation also establishes the weight categories and rules.


Though, people feel that women in this sport are not as prominent as men, there is however a growing awareness of women in the game due to popular female personalities and fighters such as Gina Carano and Megumi Fujji. At present, International Sport Combat Federation covers women's MMA, and this federation establishes MMA weight categories and rules. Currently, only four ISCF MMA weight categories have women fighters as per ISCF rank: Laura D'Auguste under Bantamweight, Kelly Kobald under Featherweight, Jen Case under lightweight, and Erin Toughill under Welterweight. Japanese women participated in UFC type tournament in 1993 and made history.


Though women's MMA is now gaining popularity, it still remains outside the mainstream, and results are not published in sports pages. There is not enough exposure even for the biggest venues, and this forces lesser-known fighters to rely on Internet sites to promote themselves and the matches. DWW also promotes a combat style fighting in bikini, and in this MMA style fighting, hair pulling is allowed. In 2001, there was hardly any interest in women's MMA, and at that time, FighterGirls.com helped grow and evolve this game.


In recent years, the organized street fights between women have become popular, and these are also taped for sale. However, these days, more and more women are signing up to learn MMA, and it is a very positive step in their career. It is surprising how quickly the shape of the body changes while going through MMA training. It is now quite unlikely that women MMA will be a banned sport.