Fightin’ Fillies
With the second jewel of horse racing’s Triple Crown come and gone, Rachel Alexandra proved that the stable that bought her, co-owners Jess Jackson and Harold McCormick, knew what they were doing entering her in the Preakness. She won. She beat the best in the field and became the first filly to win the Preakness in 85 years, all without even bringing her 110 percent best, according to her jockey Calvin Borel.
Rachel Alexandra isn’t the best filly, she’s the best racehorse. And perhaps, she’s the most important step in gender equality since…well, since ever. This horse is special for more than her performance at Pimlico. She’s proof that, at least sometimes, competition doesn’t always break down gender lines.
NASCAR and golf are two sports that have flirted with breaking the gender barrier the most, though none of the females have ever achieved as much as their hype suggests (see: Wie, Michelle), but those sports are far closer to it than say, boxing.
But what about fighting? The idea of pitting a woman against a man immediately seems offensive and cruel. Men are never supposed to hit women. They’re the fairer sex, delicate flowers. And for any self-respecting man, winning a test of strength and endurance is expected and if didn’t happen, it was the man’s shame, not the woman’s triumph.
But what if there were ways to change that? Currently, the mixed martial arts world has two bankable names without contracts. They’re so good that their only competition is each other. This is bankable once or twice, but not every month.
Both Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos and Gina Carano have established themselves as the Rachel Alexandra’s of their sport, but whereas Rachel has the ability to test her skills against the best, the same would be unthinkable in MMA.
There’s nothing that can be done about our social queasiness about watching a woman get hit by a man. Most of us are programmed to feel any such fight is unfair and barbaric. But what if we started quantifying mixed-gender fights differently than regular fights? Regular fights categorize fighters by their weight, not their power or agility.
Clearly a 210-pound heavyweight would never fight a 135-pound woman. Even a 135-pound man carries an advantage over a 135-pound woman, because the pounds are packed differently between the two body types. Force isn’t simply a matter of muscle, but of how those muscles are used.
So what if the sport looked at how much power each fighter exerts? Look at all the tests Ivan Drago went through. You don’t think some of those tests could be adapted to figure out how many pounds of force Carano’s muay-tai kicks accumulates? UPDATE: Not only is it possible, it’s happened (sorta). We can deduce that Carano vs. Drago would not be a fair fight. Carano can strike with anywhere between 450-800 lbs. of force. Drago seems to be able to punch in the neighborhood of 1,850 lbs…if he were real.
Isn’t it possible to have genuine stars-in-waiting like Santos and Carano fight better competition without turning it into a circus? If Santos can kick with the force of 350 lbs. and punch with the force of 170 lbs., isn’t it possible to match her up with a man exhibiting the same numbers? Yeah, yeah. Mixed martial arts is not just kicks and jabs, but arm-bars and ground ‘n’ pound and sleeper locks and so-on, but isn’t that all quantifiable? And if it is, can’t these organizations use those quantifications to showcase their talent?
Scrapping bottoms of various barrels ain’t working so far and without the ability to parade their commodities in front of fans (I didn’t mean that the way it might have sounded), they have only a faint gasp of hope for other female fighters to develop into real challengers.
Right now a filly is the fastest race horse in the world and it only happened because she was given a chance she was close to not having. Is it unthinkable to give these same chances to human females?
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