Dana White has announced that the UFC has signed 11 women’s straw weights to the UFC roster from Invicta FC. The new 115 pound division will also make-up the first all-women’s season of TUF.
just announced a new women’s 115lb division. We have signed 11 women and they will be the first all women’s season of TUF. Congrats ladies
— Dana White (@danawhite) December 12, 2013
The move expands the UFC women’s roster and creates another women’s division. The procurement of talent from Invicta FC reflects the working relationship the all-women’s organization had with the UFC but also creates a big void for the organization that just had another ill-fated PPV gaffe.
Via MMA Junkie, the list of women’s fighters added to the UFC roster are Carla Esparza, Alex Chambers, Claudia Gadelha, Felice Herrig, Bec Hyatt, Emily Kagan, Juliana Lima, Rose Majunas, Tecia Torres, Paige VanZant and Joanne Calderwood.
Payout Perspective:
It appears that times have changed as the UFC has now embraced women’s fighting. Not only is one of its top stars a woman (Ronda Rousey), fans have gravitated to seeing women fight. With the expansion of the women’s ranks, the UFC will have more women fighters on more cards.
Perhaps seeing that ratings for this past season’s TUF grew when women fights were featured, TUF 20 (set to begin May 2014) will feature the 11 women with the winner of the house being crowned the new straw weight champion. We will see if an all women cast will grab ratings for the series.
With this announcement, one has to wonder about the organization that the 11 women left, Invicta FC. Although most that do not follow women’s MMA closely, it’s likely that the 11 women women that moved to the UFC were some of the best on Invicta’s roster. As a result, one now wonders if Invicta becomes a developmental territory for the UFC and a business agreement is brokered. With Invicta’s efforts to monetize its product going awry, what will it do to make money.
UPDATE: Tweet per Helwani and RT by Fox Sports. So that counts as two sources…right.
BREAKING: Per @arielhelwani new @UFC Strawweight Fighters will get paid at least $32K each before entering octagon, the champ will get $40K.
— FOX Sports Live (@FOXSportsLive) December 12, 2013
The women’s pay is not going to sit well with the $8K/$8K fighters on the roster right now.
One also has to wonder if Invicta didn’t quietly sell out. After giving its second round of refunds. You would think if there was ever a time one needed to check out and needed money. That might be it. That said. It doesn’t put Invicta in much of a tight spot. Im sure they got paid for each fighter they give up or got some type of pay off. ALso they were never name driven anyway. The one selling point they have is WMMA. They still have that wethere it is girls who have had a couple Invicta fights or all new girls. Nothing really changes.
I really don’t have much interest in a all Female TUF. I don’t know how long I can keep myself interested. BUt I am infatuated with Rose Namajunas. Very cute and sexy! If i tune it. That will be the reason why!
Major props for getting in “One has to wonder” 3 times in that last paragraph. Impressive!! lol
So does UFC officially have a new weight division? If they are signed I guess the answer is yes, even though it looks like none of them will fight in UFC until May.
UFC seems determined to go for a quantity strategy. They are deliberately flooding the market with UFC events, knowing full well that dilutes interest.
I think they’ve accepted being niche. And rather than focus on huge, uber-popular events.and increasing popularity in existing markets like America, they are going for huge international expansion.
I think UFC is especially worried that an alternative could rise up in Europe or Asia. Flood the market, make less money now, but make sure you conquer the entire planet. Make it completely unprofitable for anybody to compete against you.
To flood the market they need more fighters and more weight divisions and more title fights.
Instead of trying to be popular with 10% of sports fans in any country, they are trying to get 2% of every country.
Wow, Ariel just said on Fox Sports, just said that the girls the UFC brought over from Invicta had their pay bumped up to 8,000/8,000 and each one of them will be paid for 2 fights before they ever get on TUF. Basically all the fighters will be given $32,000 and one fighter who had a 10,000/10,000 contract will get $40,000.
So I guess that’s how the UFC got them from Invicta. If they are paying that much to the fighters. Im sure Invicta got a sweet deal out of it too!
And one has to wonder this…
I don’t understand the pay and why they are getting it. I also don’t see how this would effect any of the other fighters in the UFC who get 8/8. Im sure they would like to have free money too. But it doesn’t change anything for them. Also 8/8 is pretty much the standard contract for noobs. So these contracts sound about right. I just don’t know the reason behind them getting 2 fight and 2 win bonus for not fighting at all. Unless it was to buy them out if them contract. But even then you would think they would buy them out at Invicta prices. Not give them a raise first then buy their remaining fights. Unless this was a stipulation by Invicta. What ever the case it was an expensive move. Not counting anything Invicta was possibly paid. The UFC spent 400,000 on these girls and now have to fund a TUF and hope it doesn’t flop.
Why UFC, why?
Why another season of TUF?
Wow… so right after my UFC Invicta shpeal this news gets launched. I wasn’t 100% correct but I was on the right tracks. Basically UFC just bought a whole division from Invicta (instead of the whole company) and plopped it in the UFC.
I’m just waiting on the male Straweight announcements… hopefully they can keep that at bay for at least a year – don’t know how much interest there will be for men with 12 year old bodies duking it out in the Octagon.
Another thing that’s interesting with all this WMMA is they are limited as to where they can show it. In Sweden, they couldn’t even have the Tate/Zingano fight and had to shuffle it. Aren’t there some serious cultural boundaries that would exclude WMMA in parts of Europe, Asia, Australia?
I don’t understand the strategy to keep adding lower weight classes either. Look at how unpopular the flyweight males are! Heck, anything under 170 can’t pull its weight on PPV. I also expect that WEC on FOX 9 err UFC on FOX 9 this weekend is not going to pull good numbers due to the “UFC LITE” theme.
I guess the quantity and over-saturation “Pinky and the Brain scheme” for world domination makes sense.
@ JoseK
“Instead of trying to be popular with 10% of sports fans in any country, they are trying to get 2% of every country.” – 2% is even a stretch.
Let’s look at the US as an example, because this is the model. I think we can get an educated guess by looking at TV/PPV viewership as to how many people regularly follow MMA.
Looking at ratings, I’d approximate 0.5 – 1% of the population follows it. Yes, it’s that low, on average if you walked any town or city 1 out of 100 people would be able to carry on an in-depth conversation.
MMA is a niche and it’s taken the Zuffa erra almost 10 years to get < 1 % of the population involved just in the States. They have their work cut-out for them, especially many of the fighters are either English or Portuguese speaking.
I think this is a great move for WMMA but not so great for the UFC. I feel putting the women in a main event over the men will hurt the UFC in the long run. Putting more women in the cage could however dilute the sport even more. Too many names, too confusing to follow taking away air time for fighters they should be promoting. If they think women will bring in more women fans they are mistaken, women want to watch guys fight. The women MMA is a novelty at best, they will shove it down everyone’s throat until we cant take it anymore. They should have some of these women fight men lol
I think May is when they start filming, so the first episode will air in September like usual. Which means the women won’t be fighting live until Thanksgiving, so it’s good that they’re getting paid.
I’m not sure what makes the UFC (and some writers) think fans want to see more women fights (unless they include Rousey).
TUF 18 (women) 1.129MM
TUF 17 1.705MM
TUF 16 1.3MM
TUF 15 (TUF LIVE) 1MM
Yawn. Hope they put them all on the new internet channel so they don’t take space away from fights I would like to see. Maybe if they had women heavyweights, that might be interesting.
Leon, good point. I just made up those #s to illustrate my argument.
WWE is following the same international strategy as UFC. Instead of going for mass popularity in the US and trying to recreate the booms of the 80s or 90s, they are trying to get a reliable niche audience everywhere.
UFC has been adding lower weight classes for 2 main reasons:
1) Title fights sell. Each champions fights, on average, 2 times a year. So each new weight class is 2 more title fights a year. Title fights can be sold to casual fans who don’t follow the names. “Championship Fight” just sounds important.
2) International expansion. UFC really wants some Asian and Latin American champions. MMA collapsed in Japan when all the Japanese fighters got crushed by American and Brazilian fighters. The avg human being is nationalistic and chauvanistic and prefers to see one of their own as champion. Dana has been pretty explicit that he hopes the lighter weight titles will produce some Latin or Asian champions.
UFC has tried to push Velasquez as their Mexican champ. Problem is he’s an America born and bred. And he speaks 6th grade Spanish. Better than nothing, but Mexicans don’t accept him as one of them, because he isn’t. This has happened in boxing a lot. Mex-American boxers never achieve the support in Mexico that a native born Mexican would get.
WWE’s big advantage is they can just select their roster to feature a mix of ethnicities and nationalities. UFC needs them to actually win.
When WWE decides to expand to India. They just put some Indians on TV. When WWE expands in Mexico, they put make a Mexican the champion.
UFC has the advantage of weight classes and they are desperate that some fighters outside the US and Brazil start winning some title bouts.
Even Mayweather-Canelo is considered niche when you think about it and that was the biggest combat sports fight in the last years, did huge numbers but what was all over Sportscenter and the rest of the sports media? It was mainly about College Football and MLB if I remember right, the fight was promoted more than any other in years but still wasn’t the main sports taking point.
I can see the UFC adding regional titles in a few years, it would probably work like Boxing titles do with guys giving up their regional titles when they reach a certain level (say top 10-15). If they add more shows a European heavyweight title could headline in say Poland and an Asian Welterweight title can headline a card in South Korea. EFC Africa does amazing ratings in South Africa (2.5 million is a country of 40 million) and they usually only use African talent and most of it’s from South Africa
They could split the world into sections, either in traditional continents although some might be a little light on talent, Africa probably doesn’t have that great of talent and Australia (the continent) only has like 40 million people. or ones that some businesses use, like EMEA (Europe Middle East & Africa) Asia Pacific and Latin America.
An all-female season of TUF is going to be painful to watch. Women’s MMA is 95% of the time boring. Strawweight WMMA is the most boring of all.
Did anyone here watch Invicta 7 is the past weekend? Horrible, but typical WMMA card. Absolutely boring and predictable with one of two finishes being due to injury.
An all-women TUF? Are they mad? That’s gonna do even worse than this last one’s record-low ratings, and even that had the two most recognizable faces in WMMA.. The flyweight division is like five-deep and wouldn’t be able to sell out a couple-thousand-seat ballroom. HOW do they think a women’s 115 division is gonna go?