Good news for female fighters, from MMA Junkie

Strikeforce women’s welterweight champion Sarah Kaufman is expected to make a return in late July – in a likely non-title fight – while a 135-pound women’s tournament determines a No. 1 contender for the undefeated title-holder.

That’s according to Scott Coker, who shared the plans with MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) over the weekend.

Kaufman topped Takayo Hashi in February for Strikeforce’s first-ever women’s 135-pound title, and the 24-year-old Canadian now owns a perfect 11-0 record.

“We’re going to throw that tournament at 135 (pounds), probably (on) July 24 or maybe 31,” Coker said. “We will probably have her fighting on that card, and then we want her to fight the winner of that tournament.”

Nice to see actions being taken from the bad news of last week. I am still new to this blogging thing, but I do believe if your going to shame an org for doing wrong by its fighters you should be just as vocal when they try to rectify or clarify their motives and actions. So props to Strikeforce for getting female mma moving forward again.

Strikeforce is also setting up a title bout with their other female champion with Champ Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos vs Jan “Cuddles” Finney. While the challenger in Finney may not have the most impressive of records (8-7). It has more to do with the sparse and miss-match laden nature of booking female fights, Finneys got the Sokoudjou/Brett Rodgers treatment with some of her earliest fights against the elites of female mma like Shayna Baszler, Meisha Tate and Erin Toughill. Hopefully with more exposure and fighters coming into the sport such fights will soon be a thing of the past.

Thanks to Sherdog for the pic.