Before Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano, there was Christy Martin.
The former boxing world champion broke through into pop culture in the 90’s having been the first female fighter to fight on a major pay-per-view card. It was also the start of audiences accepting women as fighters that has been growing ever since.
Continue reading Video: Christy Martin at the IWBHOF CeremonyOnly months after winning her second Olympic gold medal, Claressa Shields is ready to spark a revolution in the pro ranks.
The successful world amateur champion will hit the ring in las Vegas as a part of the Kovalev versus Ward undercard live in Las Vegas Saturday night.
The popular boxer will face a familiar foe in fellow Team USA vet and nation amateur champion Franchon Crews, who will also make her pro debut. Sheilds handed her a loss in their only other outing, and Crews looks to avenge it.
The stream starts at 7 p.m. est/4 p.m. est and you can watch it below.
World boxing champion Heather Hardy is heading to MMA.
Hardy decided to crossover and has inked a deal with InvictaFC. She announced the signing via Ring TV. Ironically it was the new insurance plan for fighters under MMA legalization in home state of New York that drove her to the decision. She is still expecting to box along with her MMA career. Continue reading Watercooler: Boxing’s Hardy to Invicta; Schneider to Bellator
Two Olympic Gold Medalists will turn pro starting in November.
Claressa Shields will make her pro debut in Las Vegas November 19th on the preliminary card of the Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev fight card. Continue reading Women’s Boxing Gets its Platform as Taylor and Shields Turn Pro
Flint, Michigan’s Claressa Shields continues her dominance as the best amateur female boxer at 75kg. She became the first US boxer male or female to repeat as a gold medalist as she defeated Netherlands’s Nouchka Fontijn Sunday in an unanimous decision in the 75kg finals at the 2016 Olympic Games. At age 21, we won’t be surprised if she tries for the trifecta in 2020 in Tokyo. Continue reading Olympic Boxing Recap: Shields and Adams Repeat; Mossely Takes Gold
No female MMA fighters made the ESPN the Body Issue this year, but women’s combat sports did get two representatives.
Olympians Adeline Gray (wrestling) and Claressa Shields (boxing; 2012 gold medalist) are both in the issue. Both will represent Team USA in Rio. Continue reading Wombat Watercooler -Bellator, POP, and Invicta Adds Fights to a Busy Summer
Over two years ago, Lynn Le had a vision: to make female fight gear that actual fit and was more reliable.
Le soon began her journey giving creation to Society Nine, a company that will change the combat sports world as a whole. Her kickstarter found huge support, garnered her some awards, and got needed funding to get started.
It wasn’t easy though. Pressure to deliver a completed and well working product is a monumental task. Le and the company had to deal with delays due to find more appropriate vendors for materials, dealing with factories that need to manufacture the products just right, and finally getting the gear in the hands of the individuals who paid good money for a high quality product. Society Nine was able to pull through the hurdles and deliver their product as promised.
Continue reading Lynn Le Updates us on Society Nine as it Makes its World TV debut
After the dust settles in the match between UFC champion Holly Holm and Miesha Tate, you can see them on the big screen in Los Angeles.
The Artemis Film Festival announced this week “Fight Valley”will make its world premier April 23rd in Los Angeles during their second annual event.
Continue reading “Fight Valley” to Premier at the Artemis Film Festival
International Fighting Evolution has announced a tournament that will focus on striking and the art of stand-up fighting.
“The Circle” is a team tournament in which fighters from 16 different countries compete in what is a combination of kickboxing and shootboxing. The participants compete in a circular 23 foot ring with three 3 minute rounds. The gloves are lighter than boxing gloves: 6 ounce gloves for lighter divisions and 8 oz for the heavier ones.
Each team will consist for three male and one female fighter. The females will be fighting at 121 pounds/55 kg. In a unique twist, fighters can’t gain more than 3 kg (6.6 lbs) between weigh-ins and the fight.
The first event is slated for Barcelona, Spain September 12th. It will see Team Spain versus Team Australia and Team Thailand versus Team Italy. The matches themselves see:
Among other announced participants:
Countries who haven’t announced their female participants: Brazil, China, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, and the USA.
The September 12th event will be broadcast on Fox Sports Europe and Africa, but no streaming or broadcast details as of yet for North and South America.
Moseley Productions has stepped up and given women’s fight fans what they have always wanted.
The boxing promotion announced Sunday that Maureen Shea will face IBF World super bantamweight champion Yulihan Alejandra Luna Avila on pay-per-view August 29th. The match will be on the undercard of the Shane Mosley versus Ricardo Mayorga event.
It has been nearly a decade since a women’s boxing bout was on a US ppv. Mosely credited Ronda Rousey for pushing them to put the match on the televised ppv portion.
Maureen Shea was a great choice to kick off what could be a revolution in the sport. Shea (24-2) won her past 10 bouts, with half of her wins by TKO or KO. The current IBA super bantamweight champ helped Hillary Swank train for the movie “Million Dollar Baby” and was featured in the documentary “Fight Like a Girl”.
She will have her hands full with Mexico’s Avila (12-2) who won the IBF World super bantamweight title this past November. Avila has yet to be stopped in the distance.
The match will hopefully spur more promotions to feature female bouts on their televised cards.
There has been many films that have covered female fighting in one form of another for the past fifty years; from documentaries to major motion pictures.
The new millennium and the increase of female participation in combat sports has saw growth in to many of these stories being told.
The Artemis Film Festival is looking to highlight these stories as they are currently working their first event for April 2015.
They have started an Indie Go Go campaign to help get the event going.
We talked to the organizers Sean Newcombe and Melanie Wise about their inspiration for the festival and how women’s combat sports have been a big part of it.
Wombat Sports: How did the idea of the Artemis Film Festival come about?
Artemis Film Festival: The idea came about through inspiration, really. We have all been devoted to female action films from the standpoint of the sheer joy we have for physically strong female characters, but also from the standpoint of our passion for having a positive effect on the image of women in film and culture. We’ve all been completely focused on writing and creating female action films. We thought that having a film festival focused on female action heroes would allow for people who share our passion for strong female characters to celebrate this genre. We also felt it would be an opportunity to spotlight the power of women in our culture.
We wanted the festival to be a place where the legions of fans who love female action heroes could go and enjoy a array of great films in one place and at one time. (Female action films are a $3 billion industry, so this is not a niche.) The fact that such a festival had never been done before boggled our minds.
By showcasing such films, we could also draw attention to women as heroes, fighters and leaders, rather than as long-suffering wives, dutiful assistants and victims. We hope that we could help change the narrative of how women are portrayed in film.
Lastly, film often reflects and influences how we see ourselves, and celebrating these films, we hope, will help positively influence how women and girls perceive their power and status in culture.
Wombat: Can you tell us about the festival?
Artimis: We plan to show both classic female action films such as “Aliens” and “Kill Bill” and also showcase new films by unknown filmmakers in our festival competition. We want to be a venue that encourages new and unknown filmmakers to make female action films. If there’s an outlet for such films, they are more likely to be made.
We are also going to have an awards ceremony for films in competition and give awards to the women who are both pioneers and stars in female action films made by Hollywood. We have sent many invites to well-known female action stars and expect to hear from them soon. Also, we want to honor stuntwomen, athletes (women’s mma, of course) and female first-responders, such as military women.
W.S.: The culture has shifted in both entertainment and sports in term of female roles. What are you thoughts about the societal change?
AFF: There’s has been a shift in reality, in our everyday lives, but there has not necessarily been a shift in how that reality is portrayed in the media. While Hollywood has recently realized the power of the female action film market, they’ve been slow to broaden their portrayals of women to reflect the dynamism and power that can be seen in women in every aspect of our culture. We hope that our festival will help prod a faster shift to not only more roles for women in film (right now less than one out of every three speaking characters in a Hollywood movie, on average, is female), but to stronger, better roles for women.
W.S.: What kind of reaction have you seen among the female fight community?
AFF: The response from women, generally, has been extraordinary! The women we’ve heard from both in social media and in daily life has been completely positive, passionate and vocal.
With respect to the women’s mma community, we have not heard a lot, unfortunately. We’d love to hear more from them because we are huge supporters of womens mma! We love the sport and we’d love to celebrate it at our festival. Women’s mma is at the forefront of positively shifting societal images of female physical power. (Invicta FC and Tuf 20 are just two examples of that positive shift.) We want to honor that.
W.S.: You have an indie go-go started to make this event happen. What benefits can people expect for supporting the festival?
AFF: They can expect to see a festival which will properly honors the female action genre in a manner it deserves. We’d like our festival to have as broad a reach as possible so that we can include as many of the great films and as many of the women who are part of this cultural gender shift as possible.
Our crowdfunding is intended to allow us to show more classic films, more films from new, unknown filmmakers in the competition and offer a chance to honor the kind of women we mentioned above. We’d also like to make sure that the experience of the people who attend the festival is as comfortable and enjoyable as possible.
By crowdfunding we feel that we can offer a broader, bolder festival.
W.S.: Anything you want to add?
AFF: We want this festival to be fun, but we also want to open minds. The empowerment of women is at the center of what this festival is about. It’s the soul of it, in fact.
Also, we’d like to say that we love your blog and are big supporters of women’s combat sports!
Thank you for allowing us to talk with you about our festival!
As I explained in my open letter, I am looking to change Wombat Sports to what it was initially meant to be. I can’t do this on my own, and that;s where you come in.
We are looking for contributors to help with writing articles and covering certain combat sports. You would also get to interview talented athletes in those sports.
The main contributors we are looking for is in women’s boxing, Muay Thai, freestyle wrestling, and BJJ. (We already have some people interested in covering the WMMA portion of the site). The cool things is I have the tools to gain news and info for these sports, just not the time to write it up. You can “learn on the job” if you aren’t an expert on these topics; but being curious is the key thing.
You can learn more about what I am expecting and what benefits come with being a part of Wombat Sports here.
Wombat Sports 