Gina Carano continued her journey to become the face of womens MMA at Saturday's EliteXC show in Honolulu against Tonya Evinger. Or that's what Showtime is trying to sell us. This match wasn't as successful as Carano's February match against Julie Kedzie. Evinger gave us a lot of trash talk before the match and as usual, Carano had trouble making the 140lb weight. Of course the long term problem is that many of the top female MMA fighters are in the lighter weight classes. It's unlikely that Carano will fight any of them and EliteXC would be making a huge mistake to have her do that.
The match started with Tonya Evinger getting a quick takedown on Gina Carano. Ground work is supposed to be Evinger's strength so one would think that she would take advantage of this situation. But she just didn't. Carano showed a lot of poise and that's a good sign. Evinger wasn't getting anywhere so eventually Carano was able to turn her over and mount her. Then Evinger did something really stupid. With round one coming to a close, Evinger should have rided it our and start over in round two. Instead she tried to get up and when she got to her knees, it gave Carano the opening to apply the guillotine choke. Evinger tapped out at 2:53 of round one. It's a big win for Carano but Evinger was terrible and admitted that on her website.
The fan reaction after the match hasn't been good. Some fans are even complaining that it was a work. It was a poor match mostly because Evinger did not perform up to expectations. She fought a stupid match. Carano took what was given to her and won by submission for the first time. She deserves credit but EliteXC has a lot invested in Carano and they need to give her a better opponent. That's going to be very difficult in her weight class. I don't think they want a repeat of the weigh-in for this match but there aren't many fighters in her weight class. Maybe they should find someone lighter to be the face of womens MMA. Here's the video of last night's match.
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