I still don't see the difference between that and men fighting opponents who cut a huge amount of weight? That's not completely commonplace granted, but it its still fairly common to fight someone who is a weight class above you come fight night. Bisping, Sonnen, Rumble and Linekar come to mind. I'm open to the idea you mentioned of having the women with a higher weigh in limit to even it out but I'm still not entirely convinced its necessary and would damage the credibility of any woman who won the fight. People miss weight by a pound now and its blamed if they happen to win after. Letting women weigh in heavier will destroy it. I'm much more in favour of doing it with normal weight classes first and going from there. If it does turn out that in practice the women are clearly losing because they're getting outmuscled (which is a seperate issue in itself since I would expect women to lose more often based purely off women's mma being at a lower level then men atm and then you have to work out whether its askill or power discrepancy that made them lose) then you have a better reason to start messing with alternative limits but doing it from the start sounds like another way to cause opposition to it to me.
crash cutting weight and regaining it after weight-in is done in pretty much 100% of sports with weight classes though. if someone loses because they didn't do it and the other guy did, you can't say the option was not there, however. of course, women have the option of bulking up and then crash-cutting as well, but it'll probably be harder to do and lead to more botched weight-ins (and accusations of steroids, like always). this is why LBM, excruciatingly hard and/or expensive as it'd be to measure, would be a better option than pure weight, if it was feasible at all. a compromise might be something like calliper tests, but those aren't always accurate. it all leads to the same point however: male-female fights are technically workable, but matchmaking is going to be a royal pain in ye olde butte
This is the thing though, it's not a theoretical problem that men have physiological advantages. It's a real physical problem and far from something that is theoretical. Fish did a good job of going over some differences so I won't repeat it all but simply at the same weight division a man is going to have a much larger percentage of lean mass, which is muscle which is going to aid them in the fight through strength and whatnot. So when fish said the fight is "equivalent of a male fighting someone one or two weight classes down who got fat" it's pretty much true. In addition to what has already been said the higher lean body mass of a male athlete will make it easier for them to cut water weight prior to weigh-ins. So it may be even more than 2 weight classes worth of real-world difference. Yes, I have seen this too. But those are amateur competitions where the weights to set to encourage new competitors who haven't yet built up the strength and technique needed for the heavier weights that would be found in higher level comps. This is news to me. Can you give more info on this? But this is the issue. One of the federations responsibilities is the safety of the fighters, that’s why they enforce rules such as checking for PEDs and not allowing fighters to fight with injuries, concussions etc. If a fight is so much of a mismatch that you risk severe injury to one of the fighters then you aim would be to prevent that by not allowing the fight to go ahead. You don’t just let it go to see what happens knowing that is likely.
I've messed up my words by saying it was theoretical. I know its a proven scientific point that men have a higher muscle percentage and find weight cutting easier and stuff. What I meant was that at the same time its not rare in a gym to see women overcome those differences and hold her own, or beat, a similar sized man. Granted that is a different beast from fighting competitively, but I can't help but see that and then question whether the physiological differences are such a huge barrier. Then again the idea of going softer with women in training is a massive bug bear for me so it could just be that I'm ignoring sound logic in favour of hoping that I could watch a woman beat up a man in a competitive environment and help with that issue
Yes training is different from competition. And this is not just talking about your typical local comp but pro MMA.
So what if you stepped it down from pro mma? Say, male-female bjj? The womens divisions are stupidly slim as it is anyway so it'd give them more reason to compete if they won't be meeting the same 5 people every time and the musculature differences become less important.
yeah, mixed grappling sports are a much better idea than striking sports, imo. many more ways to pwn people who rely on strength, by using their own over-reliance on it to set up different techniques.
The stakes are much lower in grappling. That's why we can have things like open weight divisions, things that have fallen out of favour in sports where you can get beaten to death.
I really don't see anything wrong with grappling in any form being 'open gender/weight.' As pointyshinburn emphasized, you can die from getting hit right a lot easier then you can being slammed or put in a lock/hold. Slight advantages come into play a lot more in the striking game, from being quicker or stronger to having an inch longer limb. While I wouldn't promote fear mongering of MA involving striking, I think there's a lack of awareness for how dangerous it can actually be and that includes the participants. It's a social experiment that could potentially ruin people's lives because of 'slight advantages that may be negligible' (when they aren't).
Not sure I would equate all throws or slams as being the same in terms of lethality or injury prone if your caught wrong by some one larger than you. If I recall that was part of the reasoning behind weight classes in the throwing arts, and I've seen knockouts from properly done slams/throws. % wise the chances of a major injury from striking vs throw vs submission might be less when taken by injury per technique. Would be an interesting study Just a note for all the back yard wrestlers that might read the above and believe its safer to throw someone than knock them out.
It's different in a ring than on the skreetz. Throws can be especially devastating on concrete, and it's always possible the person who is thrown strikes something hard with their head or gets impaled on something. In the athletic arena it's a lot safer than getting hit. Aside from the context, throws are still dangerous but not as much as being struck. You can also do things to protect yourself if you are thrown (like landing and bracing correctly), but not much you can do if you get your bell rung other than trying not to get hit again.
LOL I was think of the pride fight when I believe Jackson spiked his opponent while in the arm bar. Who was it that used to suplex fighters early on? Throwing injuries may not always be from impact either. Sacrifice throws and others can cause torsion injuries to joints or compression injuries if your not ready for them. Like I said it would be a great study if I could get the data. How many strikes are landed before a typical knock out could be part of it as well as other factors. May have to look into it.
I agree that it would be an interesting study. I don't equate a busted joint or broken bone to be the same as a brain injury which is the most pressing matter with striking. I've broken bones and torn joints up, and I'm currently recovering from a brain injury (freaking still, 8 months into it). That's where my concern is honestly. Knowing what it feels like to have a mild TBI I wouldn't wish it on anyone, never mind anything more serious with such an injury.
If mixed gender competitions really set off it would have its greater impact on the average amateurs rather than pro athletes in my opinion. Consider the situation in many gyms: you see a tremendous difference between males and females in terms of skills and technique, a difference which usually has very little to do with size and strength and much with training methods. In my experience, males are trained harder, with higher contact and have a much higher standard to meet. Females on the other hand, sometimes explicitely receive a totally different treatment - e.g. males sparring full contact and females only sparring light or no contact - but more often simply have lower standars to meet, which unconsciously plays a big role in my opinion. When I did Ju Jitsu female black belts could barely keep up with green belt males in terms of skill and technique. Introducing mixed gender competitions would even out a lot of this. Females would be expected to be able to compete against a similar-sized male, so they should be trained for it - to the benefit of those women who'd also like to gain some self-defense skills from a ring sport. Not to mention it would get us rid of that horrible "I won't fight a girl" attitude most boys have that turns a lot of sparring matches into total crap.
To the bolded: I'll have you know I don't do that one bit. I used to, but then I realized it was stupid and stopped (years ago). You should treat people by their skill level and their own expectations which should be expressed before sparring (mostly if you've never sparred with them before, pre-sparring condition discussions aren't needed after a few goes). I'm glad you're expressing your opinion on the whole ordeal. I don't always fancy integration of the genders in some areas but it helps put things in a better perspective when somebody of that gender speaks up about it. Your opinion on the types of culture that often happens in places of training involving gender I think is spot on. I think that's more of a problem than anything else, and if it didn't happen there would be a lot more examples to see of the "exceptions to the rule" to cancel them out as "exceptions" and become "the way it actually is." The whole topic involving striking still makes me cringe a bit though, but there's still a part of me that thinks I shouldn't feel that way.
Yeah but Rogan is pretty ignorant of the science of gender. His comments on transgender issues were pretty damn awful. If you want to segregate gender based on something like, for instance, bone density then where do you stop? Why not take away Mike Tyson's wins because his genetics gave him the kind of hands that would not of realistically been expected from an average male (and therefore an unfair advantage)? It's a serious point, there is a lot of variance within genders so if we start claiming that X is the relevant reason that we don't let men and women compete together then we will almost always have to then create fighter groupings based on X as well as weight. I'm fine with people not being psychologically comfortable with it but I think intelligently managed there is no really good logical reason to not allow it provided they both fall in the same weight class and the risks aren't too high for either of them.
Just a couple of thoughts and feel free to correct as needed as not researched.... As men have naturally higher levels of testosterone which predisposes men towards aggression (which I suppose goes back to being a hunter gather ect...) Wouldn't this give him a competitive edge.. not to mention the bonus in strength if skill is taken out of the arena. Another thought, Wouldn't the fighter possibly also have to battle social conditioning, we are taught from a early age not to hit women and not to retaliate, would some of this possibly make the fighter subconciously hold back? Cheers Dan93
The thing is those traits fluctuate among individuals within defined gender groups. Yet we don't currently exclude welterweight fighters on the grounds of "being too strong for a welterweight" nor do we prevent basketball players from playing because they are "too tall" and therefore have an unfair genetic advantage. I think there are some fights we can call off for safety reasons but it's very complex and has little to do with the gender of the fighters. Can't comment too much on the "don't punch women thing" but I think if a fighter is stepping up to the plate then I don't think that's too much of a problem. Hell, could you disqualify someone on the grounds that they are too nice to their opponent? Would the UFC ever go sorry Chael but the fact that you didn't smack talk and bought your opponent a cake and complimented him on his hair means your opponent perceives you "friendly and affable" and therefore now is at an unfair disadvantage. The problem is that any criteria suggested to justify not having men and women compete against each other then needs to apply to men competing against each other and vice versa with women.
The bold is something that should be getting stamped out from the first time someone trains with a woman in the gym. It shouldn't still be an issue by the time it comes to preparing for fights.
