(Props: mmasavvy)

As a competitive judoka, Cali-bred Ronda Rousey earned a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics and a gold medal at the 2007 Pan Am Games. As a budding MMA fighter, she has won all five of her fights (2 pro, 3 amateur) by submission, all in less than a minute. Now training with Team Hayastan in Santa Monica, Rousey makes her Strikeforce debut tomorrow night at Strikeforce Challengers: Gurgel vs. Duarte in Las Vegas, where she’ll face Sarah D’Alelio. So yeah, it’s time for you to start paying attention to this woman.

As she explains in the above video, women’s MMA needs another visible competitor to fill the vacuum left by Gina Carano. (Uh, hello?) Even though people haven’t seen her standup yet, she feels she’s better than D’Alelio on the feet, and if their fight lasts more than a minute, hey, that’s cool too. Is another women’s MMA star about to be born? After the jump, a glimpse of the kind of ferocious ground-work that Ronda could be showing off tomorrow…

(Barnett has his throat-slash. Roy Nelson has his belly-rub. Lorenz Larkin just stands there and poops in his diaper. Props: Strikeforce)

Tomorrow night, Strikeforce returns to the ShoWare Center in Kent, Washington for one of the most compelling ‘Challengers’ events in recent memory. “Fodor vs. Terry” kicks off on Showtime at 11 p.m. ET, and features a pack of exciting prospects. Here’s a quick rundown of the five-fight main card, plus videos of some of their recent performances…

Caros Fodor (10-3) vs. James Terry (10-2)
Fodor is a Washington native who trains under Matt Hume at AMC Pankration. Eight of his ten victories have come by way of submission, but he was able to score his first stoppage-via-strikes in his last fight, battering a worn-out David Douglas until he earned a standing TKO in the third frame. He’s a perfect 3-0 in the Strikeforce organization, and will be looking to move another rung up the lightweight ladder against Cung Le protege James Terry, who has won his last three fights, two by first-round knockout.

(Caros Fodor’s TKO of David Douglas, 4/1/11)

(James Terry’s KO of Josh Thornburg, 4/1/11)

(Carano and Cyborg: Godmothers of the game. / Photo courtesy of SI.com)

By CagePotato.com contributor Jim Genia

First there was the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which empowered the women of the United States with the right to vote. The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s followed, providing them with birth control and shifting values, and liberating them from the social constraints of a rigid society. Then came Gina Carano vs. Cris “Cyborg” Santos, which showed that when you put two well-trained ladies in a cage and pay them to fight, they can really beat the crap out of each other (or at least one can thoroughly whoop the other).

Yes, great strides have been made in equality for the fairer sex, and thanks to the likes of Carano and Cyborg, this equality has stretched into the realm of mixed martial arts. Now, there are impending all-female tournaments scheduled for Strikeforce and Bellator, and Sarah Kaufman’s recent violent KO over Roxanne Modafferi made ESPN’s “SportCenter”. Whether you love it or hate it, the female version of limited-rules combat is here to stay. So here’s a look back at some of the greatest moments in MMA herstory. (Get it? “His-story”, “her-story”? Yuk-yuk.)

Gina Carano vs. Kaitlin Young, EliteXC: “Primetime”

On May 31, 2008, EliteXC broke the live network-television seal with “Primetime”, a CBS-broadcast event that saw Kimbo Slice smash James Thompson’s ear, Robbie Lawler poke Scott Smith in the eye, and an overweight Carano batter a smaller Kaitlin Young. Overweight? That’s right, for the first-ever female bout on free TV, ultra-popular fighter and former American Gladiator Carano failed to make the contracted 140-pound weight limit, coming in instead at 144.5 pounds. This wasn’t the first time the “Face of Women’s MMA” had failed to make weight. In fact, EliteXC had tailor-made the 140-pound division for her because making the standard 135-pound limit would’ve required too much cardio and crystal meth. To ensure that she didn’t miss weight at her next fight, which was a pairing in Miami against Kelly Kobold, Carano stepped on the scale buck naked. Thankfully, the towel held up by her father to conceal her nude form from the crowd only slipped once.

You probably didn’t notice because you were too busy being distracted by the bright lights of UFC 111, but there was another massive MMA event on Saturday, only this one was south of the border. Kim “Sugar Free” Couture – the woman known primarily for being briefly married to a famous MMA fighter, as well as for being hated intensely by many female fighters who made their way up the ranks without appropriating someone else’s famous name or building unintentionally hilarious websites – traveled down to Sonora, Mexico to compete in the Xtreme Fighters Mexico event.

On her Twitter, Couture wrote that her initial opponent “quit” at the last minute and was replaced by Rosa Vizcarra, who weighed ten pounds over the 135-pound limit that Couture had agreed to, but what are you going to do? It’s Mexico, after all. Couture also described being part of a pre-fight parade through the streets of Sonora, and after seeing Kevin Randleman (who ended up in her corner for the fight) sitting on top of a Corona bus waving to the crowd, declared, “This is the Biggest Event Ever!”

It’s possible she got swept up in the moment there and forget that you could probably hire Randleman to make a promotional appearance at a house party for a couple hundred bucks and all the wings he can eat.