Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Polaris Bringing Top Notch Women's Matches: Gezary Matuda, Ffion Davies

The IBJJF recently bowed to pressure and opened up a ton of Masters 1-32 or however many old people divisions there are for the female competitors. Looks like a ton of participation medals and folks posting on Instagram with their 3rd place medal (when all they did was show up and lose a match - le sigh). At any rate, I guess it's fine. There's push back from the women for equal pay in the IBJJF for payouts, which is a related debate: the competition level is not even comparable, nor there even enough women to fill many of the divisions. Call it what you want, call me sexist, but it's not much different than the fact that the WNBA doesn't pay what the NBA does. The EBI did a women's event and the ratings were terrible. The same folks with visibility and big social media complains about women's treatment in JiuJitsu weren't plugging the event or making a big show of going to support an event paying real cash to women. Male JiuJitsu athletes have been plugging away lining up sponsors and brands and growing the sport for decades. I don't see why with all the athleisure wear and fashion brands and combat sports athletic wear companies started by women and in fashion they act like they can't find monetary support for women's events. If you don't like the landscape, change it.
Start your own event. I competed something like 40x at purple belt in 4 years. I've been spending every spare dollar I have on JiuJitsu and working and reffing and travelling and paying to train for 8 years. Everyone has their hand out, and wants to complain but I don't see the same folks doing things to bring money into the sport. They're always complaining about how it is and how unfair it is but nothing is stopping them from lining up sponsors and financial support or simply pooling all of that to build a women's only event. I've digressed, but my point is POLARIS is actually choosing 2 slots of it's event to plug 4 women athletes so I better see the same women complaining about the IBJJF and how unfair it is actually ordering the Polaris PPV. 

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