With Santos Suspended, Strikeforce Should Scuttle the Women's Featherweight Division

The women's featherweight division has, for the last five years, been a white elephant--a gift, an attraction, a sensational feature that is almost impossible to maintain. Beginning with Gina Carano in EliteXC and extending through Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos' Strikeforce title reign, the weight class has demanded that the promoter hobble along through botched weigh-ins and undersized, paper-thin title challengers. In exchange, an organization like Strikeforce received a pair of stars (Carano first, then Santos) who, despite competing in the sport's shallowest weight class, managed to electrify fans and boost ratings. A tenuous balance, but there you have it. The news today from the CSAC changes all that. Now that Santos has been suspended for steroid use, Strikeforce should just scrap the entire women's featherweight division.

With some rare exceptions, Santos is the only fighter in Strikeforce who's competed more than once as a featherweight. The weight class exists for her. That's a huge privilege and responsibility, a dubious arrangement made acceptable only so long as Santos draws an audience and can be depended upon to do her job. When it comes to the latter, of course, Santos has failed.

Strikeforce now has to ask itself whether or not it wants to keep bending over backwards to promote an anemic weight class in service of a fighter popped for steroids after a championship bout. And if not for her, then who? Only Julia Budd and Ronda Rousey have competed with any regularity at 145 pounds, and Budd has only managed a 2-2 record, while Rousey is prepared to drop to 135. With that in mind, there's simply no good or dependable reason to keep the division around.

Strikeforce must stay committed to the promotion of WMMA. As Dana White himself suggested in a media call last month, it's one of the few things that makes Strikeforce a unique, vital organization. However, it mustn't waste any more time or resources on so stagnant and insubstantial a proposition as the featherweight class, not when their star attraction cannot be relied upon, not when there's so much talent elsewhere.

The future of WMMA lies in the bantam and flyweight divisions. These are talent-rich weight classes replete with fighters both effective and charismatic who have worked too long in the shadow of Carano and Santos. Bring them to the fore. Build on Miesha Tate and Rousey's magnetism, on Sarah Kaufman's slam KO, on all the women of the Japanese circuit with a flair for the submission hold. Let the featherweight division, like Strikeforce's heavyweight class and the UFC's lightweights circa 2002, remain dormant until a swell of contenders demands otherwise.