Opinion: Ladies’ Time to Shine

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Saturday night’s UFC on Fox 23 is quite possibly the most interesting test of what can draw a rating for a UFC on Fox card in the five year history of the specials, as well as the degree to which star power is transferable in mixed martial arts.

While a main event-worthy fight in terms of divisional relevance, Valentina Shevchenko vs. Julianna Pena is, in terms of overall star power, the weakest main event in the history of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s broadcast network specials. But -- and this is a big “but” -- Shevchenko is coming off of a huge win over one of the biggest names in the division in front one of the largest UFC television audiences of the last few years.

When you look at past UFC on Fox specials, there are some cases where the B-side of the main event is lacking in star power. Shevchenko was one of them in July when she upset Holly Holm, though it’s hard to top John Moraga, who got a title shot against Demetrious Johnson after winning an untelevised prelim fight against Chris Cariaso. All of those fighters were facing bigger names that could carry their weight, though. There’s been nothing quite like Saturday’s main event.

That said, we’re starting to see some indications that women’s MMA fights, in a vacuum, may draw more as a television attraction than the men. Miesha Tate has consistently done strong ratings for her TV fights, for example. Even if you want to credit her rivalry with Ronda Rousey for giving her a boost, this was before Rousey was a mainstream name. For as much of a hardcore favorite as Joanna Jedrzejczyk is, her title defense against Claudia Gadelha in July topping 1 million viewers was very much a pleasant surprise. Yes, she had coached a heated season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and supported the Rousey-Holm fight, but the former doesn’t mean much anymore and the latter, a defense against Valerie Letourneau, was roundly considered a boring fight by casual fans (it wasn’t, but that’s another story). Cristiane Justino is a big name to hardcore fans and had done some strong ratings at times on Showtime, but she hadn’t been on TV in almost five years before her fight against Lina Lansberg. And of course both Holm-Shevchenko and Paige VanZant-Michelle Waterson drew big audiences on Fox, but the A-side fighters had significant mainstream exposure.

Just about all of those main events have reasons worth citing as proof that it may not just be women’s MMA promoted strongly that draws viewers, but we haven’t seen any featured women’s fights do anything less than strong ratings so far. It was an interesting choice when the UFC made Pena vs. Cat Zingano the featured prelim on Fox Sports 1 at UFC 200, but that prelim card did still did great ratings. We don’t have enough proof to be close to sure that this card will do well, but we’ve seen enough to know that the viewership figures for this show should be pretty illuminating. Perhaps even more so since August’s Demian Maia vs. Carlos Condit fight had a relatively poor showing.

At the very least, besting the August card in any noticeable way would be a minor win. But if the ratings are actively solid, even good, and build as the card goes on, then where does the UFC go from here?

While not a constant topic of discussion as of late, the promotion has come under heavy fire at times for not booking the female fighters enough, with bantamweight Sara McMann even openly talking to an attorney about the topic. Former strawweight champion Carla Esparza spoke out about difficulty getting fights most recently, claiming that the UFC would only offer her Claudia Gadelha at a time where she was concerned that the consensus 1-A in the division was a fight she didn’t feel she was physically ready for. Some of it is just bad timing with injuries in young, relatively unpopulated divisions, but that’s far from the only reason that the women have trouble getting bookings. It’s become enough of a common problem that, for example, nobody really noticed that Tina Hanninen (the former Tina Lahdemaki) fell off the face of the earth after a very competitive loss to Gadelha. If she retired, then she didn’t tell the UFC (who still lists her on the roster) or anyone in the media

If Saturday’s card, with a women’s main event lacking in star power is a ratings success, then it could and really should have a major impact. The UFC needs huge TV specials to ask for a big rights fee increase when its deal with Fox is up. If the public shows an appetite for women’s MMA on TV even without big stars, then the UFC is given serious motivation to populate the divisions further to allow for more fights, and maybe even open up more divisions. With bantamweight currently boasting just 23 fighters (strawweight is now almost doubling it at 39), the UFC would need to go on a signing spree and maybe even reevaluate its relationship with Invicta Fighting Championships, but whatever they did, anything to get more women’s fights on cards and more talent developing would be prudent.