Category — Girl fighting

This trailer makes it look like director Steven Soderbergh is stuffing his Limey and Out of Sight style in a blender with a slab of Cynthia Rothrock, and that’s a very good thing. Already, there’s very positive buzz about the movie. Besides, Ewan McGregor is so misguided and wrong at the end of this clip: Carano power!

The Steven Soderbergh-directed action movie Haywire, starring Gina Carano, doesn’t hit theatres until January 20, but it’s already been called the “best action thriller of 2012” by critic Jeffrey Wells, whose opinion I mostly trust, at least about movies.

Wells attended a sneak preview a couple of nights ago and wrote, “Haywire is the smartest, most genuinely thrilling and involving and satisfying kick-ass, faux-exploitation action thriller I’ve seen in a long time. Carano, bless her, beats her way through the entire male cast, and I believed each and every battle… If the Sean Connery-Robert Shaw train compartment fight in From Russia With Love is your idea of a classic, Haywire will throttle you right down to the marrow. I’ve always felt that Angelina Jolie was too small and skinny to kick large male ass, but I believe in Gina Carano’s aggressive abilities 110%…” He followed up the next day with more thoughts on the movie:

“Why was I, a non-fan of sadistic kick-ass actioners in the Jason Statham-Steven Seagal mode and a rabid hater of most Asian martial-arts flicks, so delighted with Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire and the fight sequences in particular? Answer: because they’re 100% believable, and because Gina Carano, an MMA champ, is the first completely credible female kick-butt star, ever. Thirty seconds into her first duke-out and there isn’t the slightest doubt that Carano can whip any guy out there, no matter how big or snarly. If she could time-travel back to ‘62 she could probably whip Sean Connery. Seriously. And she can act well enough. And she’s attractive.

There’s something almost stunning about the straight-up realism in Haywire’s fight scenes. Or nostalgic, I should say. For as I mentioned last night, and as Soderbergh himself noted during last night’s post-screening q & a, the fight-scene realism is a kind of tribute to the train-compartment battle between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love (‘63).

With their phony, fetishy, high-flying action-ballet bullshit, most Asian martial-arts films (efforts like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon excepted) get it so completely wrong, for whatever reason not understanding or unable to deliver Haywire’s simple aesthetic.

Soderbergh’s shooting and editing of the Haywire fight scenes is exquisite. Haywire is faster and more furious than Drive, but Soderbergh is clearly coming from the same “tone it down, think it through and make it real” school of action cinema. At no time do Haywire’s action scenes give you that awful feeling of being artificially adrenalized and jacked-up for the sake of coherence-defying Michael Bay-o sensation.

Carano’s Mallory Kane is an ex-Marine and independent contractor who’s on the run from several men who have some interest in or relation to an operation in Barcelona involving a Chinese defector or protestor of some kind. Mallory naturally has to elude or otherwise survive all the attacks upon her, or, as Soderbergh put it last night, she “beats her way through the cast.”

The able-bodied fellows who get the piss and the tar whipped out of them include Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor and Antonio Banderas.”

How much longer will women’s MMA have a home in Strikeforce? How much longer will Strikeforce even exist? The writing’s on the wall.

Just look at the recent cuts the promotion has made, most notably former 135-pound champ Marloes Coenen, who lost her belt to Miesha Tate on Saturday, and Alistair Overeem, the promotion’s heavyweight champ (who gets the boot over a contract dispute of some kind and thus makes a mockery of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix). Those are big fish in a very small Strikeforce sea. Add to that the loss of welterweight champ Nick Diaz, who’s off to the UFC to challenge Georges St. Pierre, and Cung Le, who says he’s only interested in fighting for the UFC if he ever fights again. Really, how can we take Strikeforce seriously any more?

And the biggest loss when Dana White finally does take Strikeforce out behind the barn to shoot it is to women’s MMA, which currently doesn’t have a high-profile home. And with White adamantly against bringing women into the UFC unless they’re wearing booty shorts and carrying a numbered card, that doesn’t leave too many options or much of a future. Which is too bad, considering that women’s MMA has delivered some of the most-exciting fights in the sport in the last 12 months and is only now really starting to come into its own in terms of depth and breadth of talent and personality. Just when it’s starting to gain some traction among fans who never would have taken “girl fighting” seriously, it looks like it won’t have a promotion to stand on.

I will admit this is just an excuse to post a photo of Gina Carano. The face (and body) of women’s MMA is set to make her return to the cage on June 18 after almost two years spent licking her wounds from the Cris “Cyborg” Santos beating and making movies with Ocean’s 11 director Steven Soderbergh. Carano will face grappler Sarah D’Elelio on a card that also features Strikeforce World Grand Prix participants Alistair Overeem, Fabricio Werdum, Josh Barnett and Brett Rogers, in addition to a heavyweight pairing between Valentijn Overeem and Chad Griggs.

If title fights were three rounds then Strikeforce would have a new women’s 135-pound champ. Liz Carmouche discovered that the hard way on Saturday when, after taking down, mounting and ground-and-pounding title holder Marloes Coenen for three rounds, she gave up a fight-ending triangle choke in the fourth round of a bout reminiscent of Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen.

Regardless of the loss, Carmouche’s dominating performance made it clear that she’s no joke, never mind that the former U.S. Marine was an eleventh-hour replacement for Miesha Tate and the bout was just her sixth since she started fighting in May of 2010. That’s right, less than a year in the cage and she gave the Strikeforce champ a serious scare and more than a few bruises, having out-struck Coenen 221-48. Sure, she punched herself out from the mount position, leaving herself open in the fateful fourth round, but she pushed the champ harder than anyone expected, and she did it on two weeks notice, without a proper training camp.

So while Coenen breathes a sigh of relief and looks ahead to a bout with Tate and a possible rematch with 145-pound champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos, the rest of us can look forward to Liz Cramouche.

I forgot to post this after it happened but it’s too impressive not to post. Amanda Nunes needed just 14 seconds to pummel Julia Budd to win her 145-pound bout at Strikeforce Challengers 13. Doesn’t mean she’s ready for champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos but wow.

It was a solid technical fight – crisp striking from Sarah Kaufman, solid grappling from Roxanne Modaferri, dirty boxing from both – until the last 15 seconds of the third round. That’s when the undefeated Strikeforce women’s 135-pound champ finished her opponent in dramatic, spectacular, bone-jarring fashion, pancaking her to the canvas and into unconsciousness.

It’s one of the most incredible ends to a women’s bout ever and the kind of highlight reel finish you expect in men’s MMA (or possibly from a Cris “Cyborg” Santos fight). Simply put: that was one hell of a power slam. Bombs-a-way!

Kaufman had complained about being stuck on a Strikeforce Challengers card for four consecutive fights and made it clear she intended to use this fight to make a point – that she deserved (and rightly so) to be on the roster for a Strikeforce regular card. Consider the point made.

Taking a more macro view, it’s also a finish that will silence some of the naysayers and help further entrench women’s MMA into the mainstream. Let’s not underestimate its significance in this regard. Women’s MMA needs great fighters, great personalities and great fights to become more accepted. Knocking out Modaferri should make the rest of the MMA world wake up.

It’s bullshit that tonight’s women’s 135-pound title fight between champ Sarah Kaufman and Roxanne Modaferri has been stuck in tonight’s Strikeforce: Challengers ghetto. Sure, it’s the co-main event, but these are two of the toughest, scrappiest fighters – male or female – in all of MMA, fighting for a belt. This deserves to be on a regular Strikeforce card, not this Grapefruit League event. And I have to agree with Kaufman and Cage Potato that it appears the only way to be successful in women’s MMA is to look like a Maxim model (like Gina Carano) or smash every opponent Hulk-style (like Cris “Cyborg” Santos). I guess having the hair style of Bo Derek without the cheekbones just isn’t enough. And for the record, my money’s on Kaufman.

While Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos gets set to face Jan Finney at June 26’s Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum, the woman she beat to earn the women’s featherweight belt, Gina Carano, has been conspicuously absent from the cage.

Well, her Hollywood dalliance, the Steve Soderberg-directed action thriller Haywire (formerly the too-on-the-nose Knockout), has begun preview screenings. And the advance word is good. Very good:

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Sarah Kaufman is the newly crowned Strikeforce women’s 135-pound champion. No surprise there. Anything but a win would have been considered a huge upset. Kaufman seriously out-struck the challenger, Japanese grappling phenom Takayo Hashi, for five full rounds en route to the unanimous decision win at Friday’s Strikeforce Challengers event.

She shrugged off Hashi’s few (and feeble) takedown attempts, and while Kaufman is no slouch on the ground, she had no interest in swimming with the shark, preferring to let Hashi get back up every time she was knocked down (which was often). The result was, well, it was a smart gameplan perfectly executed by Kaufman, although watching from home it reminded me of Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites. It was a little on the dull side.

Hashi was clearly powerless on her feet yet Kaufman seemed reluctant to go in for the kill. She played it safe. Safe doesn’t mean exciting but it is smart, especially when there’s a title on the line. I don’t blame Kaufman at all. She showed cage intelligence, never allowed Hashi an opening to mount any sort of serious assault.

Yes, it’s her third straight decision win after eight consecutive KO or TKO victories. As a fan, I want to see knockouts and submissions, especially from a fighter like Kaufman, who’s fully capable of pulling off both. What I got was a striking clinic – stiff, head-snapping jabs, sharp rights and inside leg kids as she stalked Hashi for 25 minutes.

After the fight she apologized to fans for not being able to finish Hashi as she’d hoped. This morning, she went for her traditional day-after-battle run. Think about that – she goes five dominating rounds (that didn’t exactly leave her unbloodied) and less than twelve hours later she’s hitting the pavement. Nothing to apologize for if you ask me.

There were a couple of other notable fights on the rather lackluster card. Rolles Gracie look-alike Luke Rockhold scored an impressive first-round TKO over Paul Bradley in their middleweight tilt. Right hooks and kicks did all the damage to the seriously outclassed Bradley. Meanwhile, the co-main event between wrestler Trevor Prangley and striker Karl Amoussou ended with a poke in Amoussou’s eye and a technical draw due to doctor’s stoppage. Too bad, too, because Amoussou looks like one dangerous cat.