How the UFC lost 50% of the world in 48 seconds

Female fighters aren’t nice to each other. I can’t tell you why exactly but I can tell you that we are few and far in between. When you become well-practiced and find a studio to go to, day-in and day-out, you make that place your home. The guys know you, and they learn to respect you. The new guys that walk in go through the “I won’t hit a girl” phase. Meanwhile, you’re busting their head, gut, and thighs with shin kicks. Any new girl that walks in through that door is lucky if she’s unpracticed, because then you have an excuse to be nice. If she’s just as vicious as you, you have to prove that you’re the beautiful, badass, chick at the dojo by giving her a personal beat down. All that hard work of conditioning people to respect your years of blood, sweat, and shiners isn’t going to get passed over to her just like that. She needs to earn your respect too, and remember it wouldn’t be this easy without you.

Ronda was the perfect face to awaken this sense of sexy is strong and formidable. Not weak and delicate as we are all pressured to be.

With the perfect role model and a name as big as the UFC to put her in the lime-light, women everywhere could expect some social change. Perhaps even pave the way for us to replace our insecurity of powerful women with admiration. This was beginning to happen. While on a business trip, my coworker and I used our breaks to soak up all that we could of this woman from the screen of an iPad. After falling in love, I planned a “date” with my boyfriend, now husband, to go to watch the fight. We stumbled into an over-crowded bar in PB and fought for a nice angle to watch from. But behind the screen and the cameras was the idea that she needed to prove herself endlessly, to be perfect at all times, or play up to the sexist fueled media betting her to fight a man-- because *they* so desperately needed to know they could beat her down. Ronda lost that fight with a well earned head kick to the neck. KO. There’s no fault in losing. We as human beings sometimes need to be knocked down to build ourselves up stronger.

But while Ronda was building her defenses against the world, the UFC and it’s audience were busy reminding her she wasn’t perfect.

Before she got into the ring with Nunes, she was already defeated. It only took 48 seconds to realize that fate. I stopped watching the UFC shortly after and didn’t consciously know why. But as I walked out of a pizza shop the other day, it hit me. On a little screen on top of a coca-fridge, I saw how they got it all wrong. Images of nearly-naked ring girls between scenes of fierce women warriors. How am I supposed to be built-up by *that?*