Miesha Tate (photo via Strikeforce)

By FCF Staff

The rivalry between Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey has been given new life, as Tate will coach opposite the UFC bantamweight champ during TUF 18 after all. The UFC announced Tuesday that original coach Cat Zingano has been injured, and will no longer be able to participate in the upcoming season.

Tate fought Zingano in April for the right to coach on TUF 18 and fight Rousey for the title, but was stopped by Zingano in the third round. Tate has also been tapped to fight Rousey after the season concludes.

Tate and Rousey fought once before in March, 2012, but 26 year-old Tate lost by first round armbar to the renowned grappler. The former Strikeforce champ was scheduled to fight Liz Carmouche at UFC on FOX 8 in July, but the UFC has not made any announcement about a replacement.

Zingano’s injury was kept a secret from Rousey and the show’s competitors until the show began taping Tuesday. Zingano has reportedly torn her ACL and is expected to be out for six to nine months.

TUF 18 will premiere on FOX Sports 1, September 4th.

Fallon Fox

By Joshua Molina

There are two ways to look at MMA fighter Fallon Fox.

There’s her personal journey from man to woman. Surely she has shown courage and strength to travel that difficult road and has no doubt encountered discrimination and ignorance along the way.

In that sense, she’s a hero to many who identify and admire her for her personal triumph and perseverance.

As an MMA fighter, fighting women, however, it’s a bit more complicated, as evidenced by her fight Friday night for Championship Fight Alliance against Allana Jones.

Fox has very broad, muscular shoulders, big thighs and a thick frame. That’s not to say that female-born athletes don’t have those traits, but with Fox it was obvious that she had very broad, muscular shoulders, big thighs and a thick frame.

Even if you take a fighter like Cris “Cyborg” Santos, who is ripped to the shreds, and put them next to each other, their bodies look different. It’s just a different distribution of the mass.

As for Fox’s fighting style, it wasn’t really impressive. She kind of stalked the game Jones. Fox was the aggressor and Jones played defense and tried to counter punch and kick. When the fight went to the ground, Fox had a strength and mobility advantage.

Fox finally put Jones away in the third round with a knee to the twisted throat and twisted neck, choking Jones out in a move that vaguely resembled a north-south choke. It just didn’t feel right to see the fight end that way.

The other problem was the crowd at the BankUnited Center in Coral Gables, Fla. A loud vocal group of them clearly didn’t want Fox to win. They booed her during the fight and after she won by choke, the crowd was not in to it, greeting her with a smattering of boos.

It’s going to be very difficult for Fallon Fox to get the respect she might deserve inside the cage. Will some fans always see her as a guy who beats up women, no matter the science behinder her gender transition or the caliber of the opponent she beats?

Or worse, will some fans always be rooting for her opponent because they want to see the girl beat the guy who wants to fight girls?

Clearly, there were many who wanted to see Fox lose last night, and for no good reason other than they don’t like the fact that she was born a man and is now a woman. That’s not really fair to her.

Purely as a fighter Fox was not impressive last night. She’s walking in to a tough situation. When someone beats her, the crowd will go nuts with joy and excitement because the girl beat the guy. If she keeps winning, well, many people will say it is unfair.

Perhaps Invicta FC would make a play to sign her to fight Cris “Cyborg” Santos in a match that would be one of the biggest non-UFC fights in recent history. But do we really want to see that? Worse, could Fox cut weight and find a home in the UFC and fight the 135-pound Ronda Rousey? Talk about heroes and villians, Rousey would be bigger than Hulk Hogan in 1985 going against Fox, playing the role of a more hated Iron Sheik.

Fox deserves respect for her personal journey. She’s brave and courageous to take the steps she has taken to be happy and at peace with who she is.

As a fighter, her future looks really messy and complicated if she goes forward. It’s a tough spot to be in when fans aren’t excited if you win, and only want to see you lose.

UFC women's champ Ronda Rousey has helped give the UFC a much-needed boost

By Joshua Molina

Somehow, some way, the UFC has turned the corner on its rough 2012 and could be experiencing another business boom.

After injuries and drug suspensions wrecked 2012, UFC has bounced back with strong TV and Pay Per View shows and has managed to rekindle its reputation as an “it” thing to talk about.

How did they UFC do this? It was both fate and good business sense.

The single-handed best business move the UFC has pulled off in recent years appears to be the acquisition and eventual closure of Strikeforce, and the signing of women’s great Ronda Rousey.

The buzz created by Rousey crossing over the UFC has brought new eyes to the sport and made others come back. Not only did she kick down the door for women’s MMA in the mainstream, but she is responsible for a huge rebirth of the sport overall.

She delivered on Pay Per View in her thrilling match with Liz Carmouche, drawing an estimated 450,000 Pay Per View buys, more than everyone else in the UFC, except for about for guys named Georges St. Pierre, Jon Jones, Chael Sonnen and Cain Velasquez.

Ever since Rousey’s arrival, the entire UFC has been on upward swing.

Fuel is getting its bet ratings ever thanks to UFC programming. The weigh-ins for the GSP vs. Nick Diaz fight drew 215,000 viewers. That’s more people than the number who watch most of the regular programming on that show.

Of course the GSP vs. Diaz fight is expected to draw about 850,000 Pay Per View buys. And it’s just going to get better.

Next month Jon Jones battles Chaels Sonnen for the light heavyweight championship. Sonnen is already in full pre-fight publicity mode and is doing what few other fighters dare to do — he’s talking trash about Jones.

Velasquez will fight Bigfoot Silva later this year, in what will draw big money again for the company. Anderson Silva also returns to fight Chris Wiedman, in a classic old guard vs. new guard battle.

Amid all of this, Gilbert Melendez will challenge Benson Henderson for the UFC Lightweight title on Fox on April 20. That fight will likely spark Fox’s biggest rating since the first Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos battle.

And Rousey will host the next season of The Ultimate Fighter against either Miesha Tate or Cat Zingano. Rousey on TV every week will be ratings gold for the UFC and push her next Pay Per View match in December well past th 600,000 Pay Per View buy mark.

They say competition is good, but in the UFC’s case, killing Strikeforce and luring its top stars was the best thing it could have done to revive its 2012 flat product.

Undefeated rising star Cat Zingano

By Joshua Molina

It’s not that Cat Zingano doesn’t think a lot of Ronda Rousey. It’s that Cat Zingano doesn’t think of Ronda Rousey at all.

“I don’t consider her anything superhuman,” Zingano told Full Contact Fighter. “I don’t consider her. She’s entitled to the way she acts. That’s not the way I act. That’s not the way I would ever act. She has what I want. I have not called out Ronda Rousey. I am calling out the winner of that fight (against Liz Carmouche). It’s the belt that means something to me.”

Instead, the undefeated Zingano (7-0) is calling out Miesha Tate, in hopes of taking part in the second women’s match in UFC history. Unlike, Rousey, Zingano has good things to say about Tate.

“She’s the former champion,” Zingano said. “I want to get that fight against her. She is a tough opponent. I think I have what it takes to go out and beat her and then move to facing whoever will hold the belt after the next UFC women’s fight.”

Zingano said she wants to step up her level of competition.

“Miesha is talented,” Zingano said. “She is real scrappy. She can back up what she says she can do. She is classy and she carries herself well.”

Zingano said she and Tate represent something positive in women’s MMA.

“We’re athletes,” Zingano said. “We both represent something different in MMA other than going out there and talking shit. We are women. It’s not about bullying. It’s not about being an asshole. It’s about going out there and fighting.”

Born in Colorado, Zingano wrestled in high school, becoming a four-time All-American and National Champion. The 30-year-old at one time had dreams of trying out for the U.S. Olympic team.  She wrestled and beat guys in high school.

“The majority of my wrestling career I was the only girl on the team,” she said.

Along the way, she pissed off a lot of people. She didn’t care.

“Many coaches wouldn’t shake my hands after I beat their boys,” Zingano said. “Many boys wanted to see me quit, but I didn’t have quit in me.”

But after that she said that she lost her passion. Right after high school a close friend of hers died, and she said she felt “pretty screwed up about that.”

In her last effort, Zingano (right) choked out Raquel Pennington at Invicta FC 3 on Oct. 6, 2012. Photo credit: Esther Lin/Invicta FC

Later she developed two bad staph knee infections, which led to multiple surgeries. She said she was laid out and depressed.

“There was just something about the sport,” she said. “When I needed the passion it wasn’t there.”

Her last wrestling match was in 2004 in the Dave Schultz Memorial  International.

She remembers watching Sara McMann in the 2004 Olympics.

“She and I wrestled before and I did feel sad that I missed out on something that I potentially could have done well in,” Zingano said.

She struggled for three years looking for an outlet.

In 2006, she found Jiu-Jitsu. The art rekindled her passion and she believes she became a better Jiu-Jitsu fighter than wrestler.

She brings all her abilities into the MMA cage, combined with aggression and heavy strikes, Zingano has looked unstoppable.  She has three wins by KO and three wins by submission. She said she’s never been hurt in a fight.

“I am not satisfied with decisions,” Zingano said. “I would really be upset with someone being able to dispute whether I won. I am all about finishing. I am not a point-getter. I like to go out and finish and be in control of that person.”

And she wants the UFC strap. She also draws inspiration from her mother, who died young from cancer, and her happy, healthy 6-year-old son.

“I just really want to fight the best,” Zingano said. “I have no problem proving myself. I have done it my whole life.”

Alistair Overeem (far left) and Bob Sapp (far right) went head-to-head in an arm wrestling contest.

By Joshua Molina

The awesome Alistair Overeem appeared in a Japanese Arm Wrestling contest earlier this week.

Doesn’t Overeem have better things to do?

Question the wisdom of locking up with the likes of humongous Bob Sapp a month before he is scheduled to fight Bigfoot Silva.

In fact, Overeem is supposed to go before the Nevada State Athletic Commission Jan. 8 to get relicensed, a year after he crushed Brock Lesnar and tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone.

Overeem is in line for a title shot against Cain Velasquez if he beat Silva. How stupid would Overeem feel if he tore a bicep or injured a wrist competing in a comedic celebrity arm wrestling contest?

Worse, Overeem jobbed to Sapp in the contest. It’s the guaranteed only time the headline will read “Overeem loses to Sapp,” who is strong, but can’t fight.

Overeem, by the way, didn’t look super-jacked like he has in the past. He looked more like a big, well-conditioned dude who lifts weights, than the hulk-ish bodybuilder type who fought Lesnar.

. . . Bellator Fighting Championships debuted its new Bellator 360 show last night on Spike TV – but without its biggest star, the enigmatic Eddie Alvarez.

The UFC and Bellator are competing for Alvarez’s services.

Alvarez has long been considered one of the best lightweights in the world, but as his star grew, so did his salary needs.

Alvarez, tired of being a big fish in a little pond, put himself in a bidding war with UFC and Bellator – a move that has him watching from sidelines as “MMA Comes Home” to Spike TV.

Bellator apparently matched the UFC’s offer, which means Alvarez will have to decide where he wants to fight based on factors other than straight cash.

If Alvarez is smart, he will sign with Bellator. He would get lost in the UFC and probably forced to prove himself all over again. He’s a star, whether he’s fighting for the “A” or “B” company.

. . . The Honda Center has sold fewer than 6,000 tickets for the Ronda Rousey vs. Liz Carmouche fight.

The show, which features Dan Henderson vs. Lyoto Machida on the undercard, should sell out by showtime on Feb. 23. The fight will get a ton of press, and Anaheim, California isn’t exactly a hotbed for MMA.

Expect a lot of walk-up, day-of-fight sales for the Rousey show.

Liz Carmouche says she is unafraid of UFC women's champ Ronda Rousey. Photo credit: Esther Lin/Invicta FC

By Joshua Molina

Liz Carmouche is the other woman.

The other woman in the biggest women’s mixed martial arts fight of all time.

The world already knows the Ronda Rousey story: The sassy U.S. Olympian won the Bronze Medal in the 2008 Olympic Games, turned to mixed martial arts, where she tapped six professional opponents by vicious armbar in the first round, became a magazine cover girl and thrust women’s MMA into the mainstream.

And on Feb. 23, 2013, her rise to stardom will culminate when she headlines a UFC Pay Per View, as the first UFC women’s champion. And up until now, the MMA and mainstream media have focused largely on Rousey and her rise to fame.

But when Rousey steps into the cage in February in Anaheim, California, she will be fighting a woman whose story is equally inspiring and remarkable.

Rousey will stare into the eyes of 28-year-old Liz Carmouche, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, who served three terms in Iraq, while working as a helicopter electrician.  Carmouche is also the first openly gay fighter in MMA history. It’s a role that she welcomes, cherishes, and embraces.

“I don’t want to hide from it, (being a lesbian), Carmouche told Full Contact Fighter.

Carmouche will be front and center for the world to see when she and Rousey collide in the first female UFC event in history.  But Carmouche plans to be more than just a footnote in history. She’s planning to stop Rousey in her tracks and emerge as the new women’s face of MMA.

“I have no fear of Ronda,” Carmouche said. “I am ready and excited. I want to make it a war.”

In her last start, Carmouche (far) submitted Kaitlin Young with a rear-naked choke in the second round of their matchup at Invicta FC 2 on July 28. Photo credit: Tracy Lee/Invicta FC

Carmouche is 7-2, with 4 KOs and two submission victories. At 5 feet, 6 inches tall, with rounded shoulders and curvy biceps, Carmouche has one of the more muscular and fit bodies in womens’s MMA.  Nicknamed “The Girl-Rilla, Carmouche uses an aggressive style, with frequent Muay Thai clinches to overpower her opponents.

She was raised in Okinawa, and brought up by her mother and stepfather who taught at a military college.  She liked sports as a girl and developed an interest in boxing and wrestling.

“I liked the aggressive nature of the individual sports,” she said.

But her small high school with a graduating class of 25 didn’t offer those sports and it cost $14 to take a bus ride out of town to train in those sports privately.  Instead she played soccer, volleyball and cross-country.  She enrolled in the Marine Corp and fell in love with MMA after a friend introduced her to the sport.

She caught the eye of then-San Jose-based Strikeforce, which promoted women’s MMA long before the UFC hopped on the bandwagon.  As a replacement for an injured Miesha Tate, she nearly became the Strikeforce Women’s bantamweight champiom in 2010 when she battled then-champ Marloes Coenen.

After pounding Coenen for nearly four rounds, Carmouche made a Chael Sonnen-like blunder and got caught in the triangle choke.

“My first thought was ‘I am going to slam her out of this,’” Carmouche said.

But she couldn’t, and she tapped out, in a fight she was winning.  She was dejected after the loss. Her coach, however, told her he was proud of her performance.

“I learned a lot,” Carmouche said. “I walked away feeling confident.”

Carmouche later dropped a unanimous decision to Sarah Kaufman, a woman Rousey destroyed by armbar submission.  Carmouche said she was “off my game,” and not into it for the Kaufman fight.

But she understands the gravity of the Rousey fight.

When word came down that Rousey would be brought over to the UFC, Carmouche and her fans called for the title shot on Twitter.  The grassroots campaign helped push Carmouche over other contenders such as Miesha Tate and Sara McMann.

From Strikeforce to Invicta FC to UFC, Carmouche is no stranger to the big stage in the MMA world.

Then one day Carmouche got a call from UFC President Dana White.

“I can’t even describe how it felt,” Carmouche said, of the short call offering her the fight.

Carmouche was ready. She has been ready.

“We’ve been preparing for this fight since the moment she took the belt,” said Carmouche, who added that she respects Rousey because she has backed up all of her trash talk.

She’s not in awe of Rousey, though. After her near-upset of Coenen, she now believes she’s as good as anyone in the cage.

She trains at the San Diego Combat Academy, where she teaches Muay Thai and MMA to kids 5 to 15 years old.  She’s planning a large contingent to make the trip to Anaheim to watch the fight.  She’s fully aware that she will make history with Rousey as one of two women in the first UFC women’s match, and alone as the first openly gay fighter in UFC history.

The other women, she said, have been supportive, and has not felt any additional pressure from being a pioneer in MMA.

“I love being that person, that role model,” said Carmouche, who said she and the UFC are still working out the details on her long-term contract.

And she would love to be the one who makes history as the fighter who first KO’d or submitted Rousey.

“I have no problem being the underdog and being underrated,” Carmouche said. “It helps motivate me.”

Does Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva (pictured) stand a chance against Alistair Overeem?

By Joshua Molina

Add Alistair Overeem vs. Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva to the list of UFC fights we don’t want to see.

That’s because it’s not going to be a fun night for Bigfoot, or the fans, unless you like to see blood spilled everywhere. The UFC announced the fight for Super Bowl weekend at UFC 156.

This fight makes no sense. Chael Sonnen has a better chance of knocking out Jon Jones than Bigfoot has of making the former champion kickboxer and Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion break a sweat.

Overeem is one of the best heavyweight’s in the world. Bigfoot is coming off a fluke knockout of a statue-like Travis Browne, who blew his knee out minutes before Silva KO’d him. Bigfoot was also destroyed by Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez.

The fight should give Overeem an impressive, KO victory, before getting a title shot against Junior Dos Santos or Velasquez.

Ronda Rousey’s manager Darin Harvey has challenged Cyborg’s contention that it would be unhealthy for her to cut down to 135 pounds to fight Rousey. Cyborg’s doctor alleged that Cyborg should not cut weight because it would hurt her ability to have children and cause other health problems.

Harvey said Cyborg should get another opinion.

The truth is Rousey wants no part of Cyborg at 145 because Cyborg’s power would be too much. Cyborg knows that cutting weight would weaken her on fight night, and give Rousey any chance she has of winning.

Harvey, according to a published report, also said if Cyborg won’t come down that Rousey would consider going up because it’s a “million-plus Pay Per View fight.”

Unless the UFC books Brock Lesnar vs. Fedor Emelianenko on the undercard, there’s no way Rousey vs. Cyborg would spark 1 million buys. It’s just not going to happen.

With a super-strong promotion, it could get 600,000 buys, which in itself, would be remarkable.

The truth is Rousey should avoid Cyborg for as long as she can. There are plenty of other talented fighters out there and Rousey should spend 2013 enjoying her success, rather than force a fight with a wicked woman who could knock her out.

Georges St. Pierre

By Joshua Molina
In case you didn’t know it, Georges St. Pierre returns this Saturday to fight Carlos Condit for the undisputed Welterweight Championship of the world.

The UFC has spent millions of dollars on the promotion of this fight, all built around the return of GSP, who is probably UFC’s most popular and marketable star.

The UFC in China on Fuel TV show doubled as a promotion for the return of GSP, with every other commercial seemingly showing GSP training and demonstrating his athletic prowess by running, running and doing more running. (We get it; he’s in shape).
The UFC really needs to figure out a new way to market and promote GSP. The uber-athlete, well-conditioned, muscular ball of iron gimmick is really overplayed, now like 5 fights in a row.
Maybe it’s because they don’t have a lot of recent footage of him knocking anybody out?

Condit is of course playing a bit part in the story of GSP’s return and lead-up to a superfight with Anderson Silva sometime next year. Condit has a chance to ruin a lot of the UFC’s plans. On one hand, he has a chance to play spoiler, but he also a chance to be the guy who finally dethrones St. Pierre, who has won nine straight and hasn’t lost since 2007.

It will be nice to see GSP finally get back inside the cage. We are all tired of seeing him on a treadmill.
Pound-for-pound great Anderson Silva made headlines by saying he doesn’t want to fight until late 2013. The UFC should give him the time off if he wants it. No need for White to play hardball with Silva, considering that Silva has been close to untouchable, with the exception of the first Chael Sonnen fight.

Silva also saved the UFC by stepping in to fight (embarrass) Stephan Bonnar, on a card plagued by injuries.

White should play with Silva. Stripping him of the title or crowning an interim champ won’t help. The UFC has plenty of big fights that it could make without needing Silva, who outside of fighting Chael Sonnen, isn’t a big draw anyway.

Sonnen, by the way, continues to verbally assault anyone he wants to. Sonnen congratulated Ronda Rousey for likely becoming the first UFC women’s champ once Strikeforce ends in January and then delivered this zinger: “Another fighter in the UFC who Rampage can’t beat,” referring to Rampage Jackson. Jackson recently slapped Sonnen around for his fighting style, saying he wouldn’t want to fight Sonnen because the former All-American Division 1 wrestler would just want to “hump” him.

Strikeforce Bantamweight champion Rousey is rumored to become the first women’s world champion in the UFC after Jan. 12. TMZ broke the story last week, sparking a lot of bitterness among other female fighters.

Miesha Tate said publicly yesterday that Rousey really didn’t do a lot to get women’s MMA off the ground. This may be true, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve the credit she is getting from the sport’s power brokers and mainstream media.

Tate had her chance to change the course of history, but she tapped out during that moment. Tate fought Rousey tougher than anyone else has, outside of Judo competition, but she still lost. Rousey was in the right place at the right time, with the ability to back it up when it mattered.

The best thing Tate can do is start calling Rousey out and demand a title shot. If she wants to knock Rousey off her throne, Tate is in a position to do so.

The female fighters in Strikeforce should band together and not blame Rousey for her success. This is a time of sisterhood because it’s a breakthrough.
Women will likely be able to earn more money now and if UFC boss Dana White is serious about promoting women’s MMA (even after Rousey gets KO’d by Cyborg or someone else) then Rousey’s success should be celebrated, not used an opportunity for an unnecessary catfight.

Finally, all 42 World Series of Fighting fighters tested negative for performance enhancement drugs. By the looks of some of the bodies on that show, is anyone surprised?

Ronda Rousey (left) has made her opinion on the Jon Jones-UFC situation clear. Photo Credit: Esther Lin/Showtime

By Joshua Molina

Not too surprisingly, Ronda Rousey agrees with UFC president Dana White.

She also believes Jon Jones should have fought Chael Sonnen on eight days notice.

Rousey, who smashed Sarah Kaufman two weeks ago in 54 seconds, told ESPN this:

“I don’t know what Jon Jones’ reasoning is, but I’d have made a different decision,” Rousey told espn.com.