The Gina Carano Conundrum…

Yes! Bringing back the old titles in new and exciting ways. Let’s see if anyone from Sherdog or somewhere calls me an idiot for using it.

Anyway, Sherdog’s Loretta Hunt just wrote an interesting mailbag piece about the effect that Gina Carano is going to have on the sport of MMA in the next few months. It’s a good piece where Hunt takes a very traditional, reporter-esque point of view. She basically says she’s here, and there ain’t nothing we can do about it.

I find myself in a great deal of confusion about how this is going to end. At my heart, I’m someone who always believes in equality and that women should be able to do the exact same things as men and not be given any grief for doing so. However, part of me wonders about the “new breed” of fan that she is going to bring.

Let me tell you a story about a guy I used to work with. I saw him searching Gina Carano’s name on google one day, and I got excited because I that I had a co-worker who was into MMA. Turns out, he was, and it was because of Gina. That’s totally cool. In fact, if thats what it takes to get people to see the light, then great. More power to her. However, if you are one of these people and it takes a hot woman to bring you to this side of the fence, then maybe time to start looking at yourself in the mirror. What? Do you make all your decisions by looking around for hot chicks?

Anyway, for the first few days, I started out slow when it came to talking about fights with him. However, I had a strange feeling that for the most part he had no idea what in god’s name I was talking about. So, I asked him the most basic question I could think of asking any MMA fan at that time: “Hey, you watching St.Pierre v. Penn this weekend?” He looked at me like I had just shot his cat. Like he had never heard of the two best fighters in the world (arguably.) I was appalled.

It got worse when I got a text message from him later saying: “Forget that fight, Fedor v. Andrei Arlovski is the one you should be watching.” Wow. This man is hopeless. Don’t get me a wrong, that’s not a terrible fight, but we all knew what was going to happen. Fedor was going to wipe the floor with Captain Glass-Jaw. There was no doubt about it whatsoever. Meanwhile, GSP v. Penn was being billed as a fight that no one will ever forget. Hell, B.J. Penn won’t. He’s still woozy. (Subtle dig at Jason’s BJ Fandom.)

Anyway, the point is this guy had no idea what he was talking about. When I thought about why, I looked back at the way that both he and I got into the sport. After watching Hughes v. Gracie, Jason nutured me by explaining the natural order of the MMA world and I did my own research on sites like Sherdog and MMAweekly. This guy just saw a hot chick and wanted to stare at her.

I can’t blame Gina Carano for people like that, but I can certainly think that guys like this one might become more commonplace as she becomes popular. She’s a great fighter, but I think that her beauty is a terrible reason for people to start watching a sport.