It’s been almost 24 years since the first recorded women’s MMA fight took place in the U.S., more than 11 years since Cris Cyborg and Gina Carano elevated women’s MMA to new heights, and eight years later this month since Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche made history as the first women to compete in the UFC.
And yet, ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith can’t seem to get with the program when it comes to females in combat sports.
In the latest episode of the “Black on the Air” podcast, a conversation between host Larry Wilmore and Smith shifted to women and sports, a topic that has gotten Stephen A. into trouble before. In this case, Wilmore shined a light on recent barriers being broken by women, citing the Miami Marlins’ hiring of Kim Ng as MLB’s first female general manager and Becky Hammon being the first woman to act as an NBA head coach when she filled in for the San Antonio Spurs’ Gregg Popovich after he was ejected from a game.
That led to this question:
Wilmore: “Are we going to see more of this? This is interesting to me. This is kind of all happening kind of at the same time. What is your take on that?”
This is where I remind you that Wilmore’s question was about women working in leadership/executive roles in men’s team sports and had nothing to do with competition or women in boxing or women in MMA, none of that.
This was Stephen A.’s answer:
Smith: “First of all, I love it. I think that there’s an awful lot of women that are incredibly qualified to do the jobs that they’re doing. Where I jump off the bandwagon is when they try to engage physically. For example, I don’t ever want to see a woman boxing a man. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see a woman in the UFC fighting a man even though there are some women out there that’ll kick a dude’s butt. We get all that. When I think about pugilistic sports, I don’t like seeing women involved in that at all. I just don’t like it. I wouldn’t promote legislating laws to prohibit them from doing so, but I don’t want to see women punching each other in the face. I don’t want to see women fighting in the octagon and stuff like that, but that’s just me. What I would adamantly be against is them fighting men. I don’t think that’s cool. Plus, you don’t ever want to give men license to believe that it’s all right to be physical with a woman, to be quite honest with you. You don’t want to do that.
“And so, outside of that, when you think about them in executive positions, first of all they’re smarter than (men) a lot of times, they’re more composed than us a lot of times, they’re incredibly knowledgeable about these respective sports. They’ve had to go through trials and tribulations one couldn’t even imagine most of the time. For them to get to that point, they deserve the opportunity to showcase their skill sets. Just like we have women in corporate America doing an incredible job leading companies, being executives, pushing businesses forward, etc., etc. There’s no reason on earth why they can’t do the same in the sports world. I support it, I’m a fan of it, and I hope we see more of it.”
OK, so that’s great to hear Stephen A. say he supports women in sports executive roles, but what was the point of going off on this tangent:
“Where I jump off the bandwagon is when they try to engage physically. For example, I don’t ever want to see a woman boxing a man. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see a woman in the UFC fighting a man even though there are some women out there that’ll kick a dude’s butt. We get all that. When I think about pugilistic sports, I don’t like seeing women involved in that at all. I just don’t like it. I wouldn’t promote legislating laws to prohibit them from doing so, but I don’t want to see women punching each other in the face. I don’t want to see women fighting in the octagon and stuff like that, but that’s just me.”
What a mess of a train of thought. Smith, notorious for terrible MMA takes, sure went out of his way to be sexist and include all of that nonsense about women’s fighting.
First of all, there isn’t a movement to get men and women fighting each other, so why did that even come up?
Second, we’re coming off a 2020 in which Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk gave us the “Fight of the Year” and, quite frankly, one of the greatest fights in MMA history, but Stephen A., who apparently likes boxing and MMA, “(doesn’t) want to see women punching each other in the face.”
Okaaaaay.
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