women

(A snapshot of a culture with confused priorities.)

Yahoo! Buzz has an article on the top ten most influential women of 2008, and not only did Gina Carano, who is described as an “undefeated kickboxing champ,” make the list, she somehow landed just behind Hillary Clinton.  You remember her, the first woman to have a legitimate shot at becoming President of the United States!?  Also known as Barack Obama’s future Secretary of State!!?!  Apparently that makes you slightly more influential than a female MMA fighter who beat a few opponents she was supposed to beat and struggled to make weight every single time.

Look, I love Carano as much as anyone, except perhaps the creepy dudes or Jared Shaw, though that's redundant.  I think it’s great what she’s done for female MMA.  Her contributions to the sport through the CBS fights are immeasurable, and if stuff like this helps her get signed by Zuffa, while simultaneously upping the credibility of female MMA (also known as kickboxing, apparently), then great.

But ranking her #5, when you don't even know what sport she actually participates in?  That’s just indefensible.  Not that we should take this list that seriously.  Angelina Jolie is #1, after all, because apparently being an actress and having/adopting a bunch of children is more important than almost becoming president or commanding an army of willing women followers, as Oprah, who’s #3, has done.  Hell, Sarah Palin is #2, and she’s just a step up from an especially charming contestant on "America's Got Talent."   In other words, the list is pretty bullshit to begin with.

Maybe I’d be more amenable to Carano getting a spot on this list if she had consistently made weight for her fights.  Or if she had faced a tough opponent, like “Cyborg” Santos.  I realize only one of those two things is under her control, but my point is she’s not exactly a female Jackie Robinson.  Though, if you don’t account for inflation, I’ll bet she and Robinson got paid about the same.

(Props: MMA Mania)

The Xtreme Couture blog posted this video of Kim Couture training (and looking surprisingly sharp) along with an interview in which they discuss her kind of sad fight against Lina Kvokov.  Sounds like Kim was as weirded out by the whole thing as we were:

K. Couture: "I trained hard and really wanted to show the MMA fans a good show and let them know I was a 100% and ready to fight, I have the utmost respect for anyone who steps into the cage but felt disappointed that she just wouldn’t engage with me and turned her back on me. I was just dumbfounded.”

XC: “Do you think she shouldn’t of been matched up with you?”

K. Couture: “On paper it looked like a good match-up. We both had 1 professional fight with a loss. She was training with Matt Lindlands Team Quest so I expected she would be ready and I was ready for a stand-up brawl.”

XC: “Did you have a chance to watch the fight yet?”

K. Couture: “Yes, Lina just looked nervous from the moment she tripped coming out to the cage, she just looked like she didn’t want to fight that night.”

Ouch.  Kim goes on to say she'd like to fight three or four times a year.  Hopefully better opponents lay ahead, since Couture is bound to attract more attention than more experienced/talented female fighters simply because of who her husband is.  That fight did nothing good for the credibility of women's MMA.  Probably didn't help Kvokov's reputation around Team Quest either.  

The good people at famed gentleman's magazine Playboy have an interview with UFC prez Dana White in their September issue (which drops Friday, August 15) and one of the more interesting nuggets to come out of it are White's remarks on what torpedoed the HBO deal:

“I pulled the plug at the 23rd hour. HBO was pi**ed off… I would have had to sell out, literally. They would have owned the UFC… I took meetings with HBO’s boxing guys. I’ll tell you, if I had to hear one more time about how many fu**ing Emmys they had won, I was going to dive out the window. I said ‘You won a bunch of Emmys, but I’m kicking your a** on pay-per-view."

Awesome. Do I believe Dana White actually said that to HBO executives? Not really, but it's still a good story. As much as people criticized him for not making the HBO deal happen, you have to respect his desire to maintain his autonomy, even if it means not blowing up big time with HBO's Emmy factory.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Dana White interview if he didn't bash Tito Ortiz: