Good article at MMA Opinion about the marketing of Gina Carano:

It should be made clear from the offset that Gina Carano’s role in women’s MMA is not debatable. She is the face of the female incarnation of the sport. She is beautiful, charismatic and an incredible fighter. It is not possible to debate any of those points, as far as I’m concerned, and so it is not even worth wasting time with them.

What is debatable, though, is whether (as some elements would like readers to believe) Gina Carano is a self-made queen of the sport who conquered all of the challenges the world presented. The press image, and perhaps the popularly accepted image, (and it’s unclear whether the chicken or the egg came first on that one) is that Carano is a thai fighter who came out of obscurity through hard work, exciting wars and a desire to champion female MMA, leading the lesser known branch of the sport into mainstream consciousness.

What is debatable, and what needs to be debated, is whether or not the perception of Gina as a self-made figurehead is realistic. Certainly, the characteristics that have made her a fixture in the sport make it clear that there is no one better to lead women’s MMA, but whether she was brought into the lead with the aid of those looking to further the cause should be scrutinized a little more carefully.

Their analysis is right on the money, but as I addressed in a comment on the post it all comes down to a salient fact of the fight game:

Good article–but like many things in the fight game it all comes down to what drives media attention, puts butts in the seats, gets PPV buys and so forth. HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant had an all time great quote on this subject when he intro’d the George Foreman/Michael Moorer fight. You’ll remember that he was coming in off the loss to Tommy Morrison and wasn’t the most deserving of a title shot based on his recent form. Merchant’s quote–”There are many good fighters, but very few stars. George Foreman is a star.” summed up that situation perfectly and applies just as well to Gina Carano.

And the beautiful thing about fighting is that once you enter the ring or cage, no amount of hype or PR can help you. We’ll learn a lot about Gina from the Cyborg fight that’s for sure…

Gina isn’t alone in benefited from over the top promotion for the simple reason is that by definition that’s what fight promoters do: they promote. A couple of other examples of breathless, over the top hype–Anderson Silva KO’s Chris Leben and all of a sudden Zuffa is calling him the ‘pound for pound’ best fighter in the world. The mainstream media and much of the fight media swallows the hook and didn’t figure out they were being hoodwinked until the Patrick Cote fight and particularly the Thales Leites debacle. Dana White says with a straight face after BJ Penn beats Sean Sherk that he’s now “undoubtedly the best lightweight fighter in the world” which no doubt comes as a surprise to at least a dozen other talented lightweights fighting in the US and Japan.

The problem isn’t that fight promoters engage in this sort of selective myopia–that’s their job after all. The problem begins when the media laps it up without questioning it. Props to MMA Opinion for applying a bit of revisionist history on Carano–it doesn’t diss Gina as a fighter, but it does put her in proper perspective. Now if only the mainstream sports and MMA media could do the same with the ridiculous assertions made about other fighters, particularly the examples referenced above. The value in such analysis isnt to convince fans one way or the other but to get them to think critically about what they’re told by the promotions–that’s all too rare in MMA commentary.

Retouching History: Is the Coverage of Gina Carano Misleading @ MMA Opinion