UnderGround Forum >> Miesha: GSP is ignorant about WMMA

At the UFC 154 open workouts the now undisputed UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre offered some narrow remarks about women's MMA.

"For the woman fight, I say it's good for her, and I mean for the girls that fight," said St-Pierre. "But me personally I have a hard time watching the girls fight."

"In my heart I have, you know, it's the way I grew up maybe, the mentality is different, I'm old school.  have a hard time watching girls fighting; it's hard for me. I never really watched a woman fight, but I know they are pretty good."

Former Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Champion took issue with the remarks.

I think the problem with GSP's view about WMMA is that he doesn't have one. If he hasn't ever watched us women fight then he can't say how he really feels about it because he's ignorant.

Being old fashioned is fine, but us "modern day" girls aren't asking for your protection, we are asking for your acceptance and we are fighting for equality.

If everyone felt about MMA as GSP thinks he feels about WMMA, then he wouldn't have a job.

I'm hoping George St-Pierre can open his mind a little bit and actually watch some women's fights. We're coming to the UFC for a reason and it would be nice to have one of my all-time favorite fighter's full support.

It won't take long for him to realize we aren't these fragile little creatures when we enter the cage, we are warriors and every bit as deserving of respect as the men.

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GSP is an avid student of history, but his favorite era is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Jurrasic. However gently he expressed his opinion, if he turned his attention to the last say two or three thousand years, he would find an unbroken string of misconceptions about women in sports, that are eventually left in the dustbin of history.

776 B.C. Women are excluded from the first Olympics are held in ancient Greece, so they compete every four years in their own Games of Hera.

396 B.C. Spartan princess Kyniska wins Olympic chariot race, is barred from collecting her prize in person.

1552 Mary, Queen of Scots, an avid golfer, coins the term “caddy” by calling her assistants cadets.

1722 Briton Elizabeth Wilkinson enters the boxing ring.

1805 Englishwoman Alicia Meynell defeats Buckle, a leading male jockey.

1837 Donald Walker's book, Exercise for Ladies, warns women against horseback riding, because it deforms the lower part of the body.

1876 Nell Saunders defeated Rose Harland in the first United States women's boxing match, receiving a silver butter dish as a prize.

1885 Study concludes that "female college graduates do not seem to show, any marked difference in general health for the average health of women engaged in other kinds of work, or in fact, of women generally." This refutes the widely held belief that college study impaired a woman’s physical health and ability to bear children.

1893 Katharine Lee Bates climbs to the top of Pike's Peak and is inspired to compose a poem, "America, the Beautiul."

1896 Susan B. Anthony says that "the bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world."

1896 At the first modern Olympics in Athens, a woman, Melpomene, barred from the official race, runs the same course as the men, finishing in 4 hours 30 minutes. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, says, "It is indecent that the spectators should be exposed to the risk of seeing the body of a women being smashed before their very eyes. No matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not cut out to sustain certain shocks."

1914 The American Olympic Committee formally opposes women's athletic competition in the Olympics. The only exception is the floor exercise, where women are required to wear long skirts.

1931 Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis bans women from professional baseball, after 17-year-old pitcher Virne Beatrice "Jackie" Mitchell strikes out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game for the Chattanooga Lookouts. Landis voids Mitchell's contract, saying baseball is "too strenuous" for women. The bans lasts until 1992.

1932 Two black American women, Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett qualify for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, but are not allowed to compete.

1933 Pope Pius XI condemns women who attend boxing matches. He states that it isn't possible to preserve the "dignity and grace peculiar to women" when they "admire spectacles of brutal violence."

1960 Larissa Latynina wins three golds, two silvers and a bronze medal for gymnastics at the Rome Olympic medal count while three months pregnant.

And now, in 2012, the first woman was signed by the UFC. Despite some storied differences, she agrees with Tate.

Ronda Rousey @RondaRousey

Wow. Me and @MieshaTate actually kind of agree about something... http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/news/432744/Miesha-GSP-is-ignorant-about-WMMA/ …

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