Ronda Rousey's first defense of her Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Championship is on. The 2008 Olympic bronze medalist in judo will face former champion Sarah Kaufman on August 18 in San Diego. The fight was confirmed by MMAFighting.com, with an official announcement from the promotion set for the coming weeks.
While the true growth of women's MMA will, in all likelihood, require an eventual move from Strikeforce to the UFC, where fighters like Rousey, Kaufman and Miesha Tate can be featured on the same fight cards as fighters like Jon Jones and Georges St-Pierre, it is worth noting that the UFC's acquisition of Strikeforce last year has already been a boost for the women's divisions.
The Rousey vs. Kaufman card comes in the midst of a packed August for the UFC. The promotion returns to network television with an August 4 broadcast on Fox that features Mauricio "Shogun" Rua against Brandon "The Truth" Vera, along with a co-main event between Lyoto "the Dragon" Machida and Ryan "Darth" Bader. The following week, Ben Henderson defends his newly won UFC Lightweight Championship against former champion Frankie "The Answer" Edgar at UFC 150 in Denver. The UFC will undoubtedly use some part of its airtime on Fox, Fuel TV and pay-per-view to promote the Rousey vs. Kaufman fight card, which obviously wouldn't have happened a year and a half ago, when Strikeforce was the UFC's primary rival.
In addition, by being under the Zuffa umbrella, Rousey has been incorporated into the UFC's marketing efforts. She signed autographs alongside Frankie Edgar last month at the UFC's Octagon Nation tour stop in New York City, and she can also be featured as part of the UFC's expanded programming on Fuel TV, including shows like UFC Tonight and UFC Ultimate Insider. While Rousey and her fellow female fighters may not yet have the opportunity to ply their craft in the Octagon, they do enjoy considerable benefits from their association with the UFC.
Dana White has said many times that there aren't enough elite female fighters to sustain a division in the UFC, and while he may be right, the exposure of fighting in the UFC is probably necessary to develop women's MMA to the point where that's no longer an issue. In the meantime, though, the benefits that Rousey, Kaufman and others draw from fighting under the Zuffa banner cannot be ignored.