Thursday 7 June 2012

Cage Warriors' (Somehow Overlooked) Female 125lb Tournament

Sexton vs Daly was epic.
Photo via cagequeen.co.uk
Cage Warriors Fighting Championship is currently putting on some great shows in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. In its female flyweight tournament, they have featured three of the top ten fighters in the world, with very little fanfare from the MMA community. I had a very brief moan about Rosi Sexton's exciting victory over Aisling Daly being somewhat overlooked by the MMA media over the weekend. Now I'd like to give and over view of the Cage Warriors women's flyweight tournament so far and give a little preview of the final which should come later this year.

Fight videos and commentary after the jump.

Sunday 3 June 2012

Where's the love for Sexton vs Daly?

Last night was an all round confusing one for me. Cage Warriors Fighting Championship put on a stellar show of fights, streamed free at MMA Junkie, headlined by a heavyweight title bout between Mike Hayes and DJ Linderman. The first perplexing part was to see two relatively pedestrian heavyweights flop around at the top of a card that featured two fighters (Rosie Sexton and Aisling Daly) right at the top of their division. The other strange part of the night was that in a night of great fights put on by arguably the biggest promotion in Europe, most of my favourite internet haunts were keeping quiet about it.

In hindsight, I understand that the two fights above the women's flyweight tournament semifinal were title fights and that promoters want those title fights to headline. However, perhaps the Sexton vs Daly fight should not have been on this card at all.

As for the lack of coverage, I can attribute that to this bout being held in Europe and there being a general lack of attention for European MMA. When you add that to the lack of attention women's MMA tends to get, you would expect even a massive fight like this one to get overlooked. That we can expect the MMA media to miss a fight between two top ten fights in a weight class is a pretty sad state of affairs.