On a weekend without a major fight card from the UFC, Bellator, Strikeforce, or Dream, a brand new mixed martial arts organization stepped in to fill the void for fight fans last Saturday. Invicta Fighting Championships, which will only feature women's matches, aims to build a model that keeps female fighters active and in the proper weight classes.
Since women's fights are so sparse in other major organizations, the best in the world are often forced out of their weight class simply to appear in a major show or take on a legitimate opponent, sometimes creating mismatches even for talented fighters. Invicta aims to correct that. Saturday's card featured both positives and negatives. Let's start with the good.
Positives
Real fighters
Invicta FC featured several fighters familiar to MMA fans, including Marloes Coenen, Liz Carmouche, and Lisa Ellis (née Ward). Some of the competitors on the card were outmatched or with limited training, but there were plenty of real mixed martial artists in action. Even Randi Miller, who was disappointing in a winning performance, is an Olympic medalist whose MMA debut had long been anticipated.
Good fights
Nearly any fight card will invariably include some clunkers, and Saturday night's was no exception, but overall it was an entertaining event, comparable to many UFC or Strikeforce shows. Kaitlin Young vs. Leslie Smith, easily the fight of the night, featured three terrific rounds before ending in a well-deserved draw. Like most sports fans, I prefer decisive outcomes, but the tie was a fair result, and Invicta should capitalize by booking and promoting a rematch.
The other standout fight was the co-headliner featuring Bellator veterans Jessica Penne and Lisa Ellis. Penne took over in the third round, drawing a fountain of blood from her opponent's nose en route to an eventual TKO victory.
The right people involved
Many of the most famous people involved with Invicta's inaugural broadcast weren't the competitors. Fight fans recognized veteran announcer Mauro Ranallo, former Strikeforce champions Mo Lawal and Miesha Tate, former UFC ring girl Natasha Wicks, and even UFC cut men Stitch Duran and Don House. Getting so many recognized and respected MMA veterans involved demonstrated that Invicta FC and its president, Shannon Knapp, know their business and are committed to a quality product.
The announcers, naturally, were the most important to viewers. Ranallo was joined behind the mic by Julie Kedzie and Lawal. The team hadn't worked together before, so they don't have the same chemistry as Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan or Michael Schiavello and Frank Trigg, but the trio mostly did a solid job. Kedzie, a member of Greg Jackson's fight team and a veteran of 25 professional fights, stole the show. She was affable without being cloying, and it was great to have a woman involved in the announcing duties without sacrificing integrity or including someone in over her head.
Room For Improvement
You expect hiccups with a new promotion, and Invicta's debut show certainly had its share.
Elementary mix-ups
The new promotion did such a good job getting most of the big things right, it was surprising how many little things turned out wrong. Fighter information in the first couple "Tales of the Tape" were so far off that I just stopped trusting any of it to be correct. Most notably, fighter weights were repeatedly misidentified. At one point, Liz Carmouche's name scrolled in huge letters behind a different fighter as she walked toward the cage. These things are so easy to set up before the broadcast, it was disappointing that they hadn't been attended to.
Pacing
The event started on time, and the broadcast moved along crisply, with very little dead time between bouts. But there was so little time between matches that little things like getting a drink or taking a bathroom break had to be rushed along so you wouldn't miss anything. Then, following the momentum of Smith and Young's terrific match and Carmouche's dominant TKO victory, there was almost half an hour of dead air before the co-headlining fight. That should have been handled better.
Unless I missed it, the announcers didn't even explain what was going to happen, they just disappeared. Furthermore, King Mo apparently wandered off during the break. Ranallo repeatedly said that Lawal was "busy tweeting", and he was replaced by Miesha Tate, but it was odd for him to vanish so abruptly.
Depth
The top of the card featured talented, high-profile fighters. Some of the competitors in the early bouts looked like they'd never had a striking lesson. It's okay to feature prospects on the undercard, but I'd like to seee Invicta bring in more quality competitors in the future.
Overall, Invicta's debut showed promise, and most of the missteps look easily correctable. Long-term success probably requires substantially growing the fighter roster, eventually including stars like Cris Cyborg, Ronda Rousey, and Megumi Fujii, and that's probably not on the immediate horizon, but this is still a promotion MMA fans can get excited about.
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