[5] There has been a growing awareness of women in mixed martial arts due to popular female fighters and personalities such as Amanda Nunes, Megumi Fujii, Gina Carano, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Holly Holm, Alexa Grasso, and Joanna Jędrzejczyk and among others.

Influenced by female professional wrestling and kickboxing, the Smackgirl competition was formed in 2001 and became the only major all-female promotion in mixed martial arts.

[16] Other early successful Japanese female organizations included Ladies Legend Pro-Wrestling, ReMix (a predecessor to Smackgirl), U-Top Tournament, K-Grace, and AX.

Ronda Rousey was able to open many people's eyes and prove Dana White, the president of the UFC very wrong.

In addition to being an Olympic medalist, Rousey also won back-to-back Pan American Championship gold medals.

[22] This was soon followed by an IFC four women tournament sanctioned by the Louisiana Boxing and Wrestling Commission on September 5, 1997 in Baton Rouge.

In 2005 they held an all-women, one-night-only tournament featuring Julie Kedzie, Jan Finney, and Lisa Ellis.

[25][26][27] Following Zuffa's acquisition of Strikeforce in March 2011, there has been much speculation concerning the future of women's competition, in term both of relevance and popularity.

ONE Championship is the leading MMA promotion in Asia and hosts many female professional mixed martial arts bouts.

[34] In the United States, women's bouts organised by EliteXC saw three-minute rounds while those of Strikeforce were originally of two minutes' duration.

[43][44] Ronda Rousey became the first woman fighter signed to the UFC in November 2012, and was promoted to the division's bantamweight champion.

Some of the fighters include Felice Herrig, Claudia Gadelha, Tecia Torres, Bec Hyatt, Joanne Calderwood, and even Invicta FC's Strawweight Champion Carla Esparza and many more.

One of those moments was when Bellator added Women's tournaments, and this was important because it gave a place for top fighters in the smaller weight division to be broadcast.

The implementation of Invicta FC was a very significant time period because female fighters had a place to call home and were able to fight on a consistent basis in their own weight class.

Paige VanZant who is an MMA fighter spoke out about wage inequality in 2019 and said she wanted more money to "keep bleeding and sacrificing for this sport".

Even though it has changed, the most well-liked male fighters like Conor Mcgregor continue to attract larger audiences and earn more money although it definitely won't be long until women are just as popular, and it is truly equal.