Over the past 12 years, the UFC has headlined 16 different pay-per-view events with a women’s fight with Ronda Rousey and Amanda Nunes ahead of the crowd by a wide margin with six main events each.
But with UFC 315 days away, and a flyweight title fight between Valentina Shevchenko and Manon Fiorot serving as the co-main event, it’s been nearly two years since a women’s fight has headlined a PPV event (Nunes vs. Irena Aldana at UFC 289). Add to that, there are currently only three fighters (Erin Blanchfield, Natalia Silva and Maycee Barber) occupying spots in the UFC’s women’s pound-for-pound women’s under the age of 30 with all of the champions at 35 years old or older.
Whether it’s a lack of drawing power, or no real youth movement driving the conversation, UFC legend Matt Brown believes it really comes down to the fascination about women’s MMA having faded in recent years.
“I think it was like a little bit of a honeymoon thing,” Brown said on The Fighter vs. the Writer. “When women’s MMA first came in, everybody was so excited about it. Most of the volume of fans are more unknowledgeable people, like your average person sitting around on Saturday night watching a main event. But then as they get more into it, I’m not trying to hate on women’s MMA, they’re great for what they are, but you can’t compare it to male MMA.
“After the honeymoon period kind of faded off, I think everybody’s just started to realize they’re not as great of fights. That’s all there is to it.”
Brown truly believes the skill level for women’s fights just isn’t on par with the men and that has resulted in disinterest from a lot of the overall UFC fanbase.
“I don’t know how to say it politically correct, but women are just not as good as fighters as men,” Brown said. “I don’t know if that’s a controversial thing to say. They’re in a different division for a reason, right? They’re just not as good. I think when people get past all the drama, and the excitement and all that, and they start getting into it, they’re like I want to see the real motherf*ckers fight. That’s kind of my guess.
“I don’t want to hate on them. I don’t want to put them down or anything. I’m not saying that in an offensive way. So if MMA Fighting puts up a clip of this and it goes on Instagram, it’s going to be hate from top to bottom, which is cool. I think we can all recognize they’re simply not as good. It’s not as exciting to watch the ones that are not the greatest. The UFC is the Super Bowl of MMA. We want to see the greatest fighters in the world, period. That’s what excites us.”
While there are plenty of amazing moments to draw upon when talking about the best women’s fights in UFC history, Brown feels those numbers have dwindled in recent years and that’s also played a part in the lack of overall interest.
Since June 2023, which was the last time a women’s fight headlined a UFC pay-per-view event, only four women’s fights have earned Fight of the Night honors. Only two of those fights took place on a pay-per-view, but neither were featured on the main card.
“I don’t find the fights nearly as exciting,” Brown said. “Because I want to watch the baddest human being in the world, it could be male or female, but I want to watch the baddest motherf*ckers in the world do best techniques in the world and f*ck each other up.”
Subtracting Rousey’s star power was definitely a detriment that also can’t be ignored, especially considering the incredible amount of attention she received after becoming one of the biggest names on the entire UFC roster.
Brown believes Rousey’s dominance helped drive a conversation that also added to her legend, but since she’s been gone, nobody else has really emerged to even come close to taking her place.
“A few years ago one of the biggest conversations was Ronda talking all kind of crazy shit, like she’d beat up Cain Velasquez or some shit, but that was a legit conversation going around bars and stuff,” Brown said. “Like ‘Ronda would f*ck you up!’ That got people hyped up and excited and it’s dramatic and something to talk about.
“I think we kind of realized that’s not really the case for most of them. Like Kayla Harrison, she’d probably f*ck up [some people]. She’d probably do well in the men’s division, which is a very rare case.”
Of course, Brown recognizes that his opinions are almost certainly going to be met with derision, but he won’t bite his tongue when it comes to women’s MMA in the UFC.
“We want to see the baddest, we want to see the best … in MMA, we want to see the big knockouts,” Brown said. “We want to see the spinning elbows, we want to see the peak level of human violence. No hate at all, you don’t see it in women’s MMA, period. It’s just a fact.
“I probably just set myself up for all kinds of f*cking hate from this podcast. But it is what it is. F*ck, it, I don’t even care, I just say the truth.”
Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio
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