Author Archives: Angelique
The Top 10 Stories of the Past 10 Years
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Gina secured #9 on the list. For the rest of the top 10 visit Sherdog.com
9. Gina Carano (2007-Present)
Not women’s MMA, but Gina Carano. An important distinction.
Prior to Carano’s EliteXC debut in 2007, the idea of hosting female fighters was seen as too absurdly progressive for a sport that still nauseated a good portion of mass media. If they couldn’t accept men exchanging blood, observers figured, seeing a woman mounted and pummeled might be cause for a defibrillator.
“Conviction” — the daughter of football great Glen Carano — rejected that sexist attitude not by challenging it, but by ignoring it. She conducted herself as a fighter, displaying sharp skills in the ring and presenting herself as an articulate personality outside of it. Her looks? Absolutely a factor, but curiosity would’ve quickly given way to disgust if she had nothing to offer as an athlete.
It’s rare for any sports figure to have the weight of an entire genre on their shoulders. Even Ali, in rewriting boxing’s history, was still toiling in an institution that had a past before him and would have a future after him. But try to find even one piece about the females of the sport without a mention of Carano. She didn’t just define a division: She was the division.
Gina Carano, Randy Couture to Be Featured in ESPN’s ‘Body Issue’
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Gina Carano and Randy Couture will be among the 30 male and female professional athletes posing nude or semi-nude in ESPN The Magazine’s first “Body Issue,” which hits newsstands on Oct. 9.
Couture’s cauliflower ear will be the focus of his spread and Carano will be posing semi-nude in “The Bodies We Want” photo section.
“You really get an idea of everything these guys and gals go through and the toll it takes sometimes,” said Sue Hovey, the executive editor of ESPN The Magazine.
“Randy has a very interesting looking ear, known as a cauliflower ear, and I think that when you’ll see it, you’ll realize that this guy goes through a lot to do what he loves.”
Major names from the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, tennis and boxing will also be featured in the special issue, which will be released once a year. And yes, private parts will be strategically covered up.
“These athletes, they were very brave because we were asking to look at some of the more visually vulnerable places on their body,” said Gary Belsky, editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine.
Carano hasn’t been heard from much since she lost to Cris Cyborg in August. It was announced earlier this month that she will be appearing in Oscar-award winning director Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming film, Knockout.
Couture recently lost to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira at UFC 102. He is scheduled to face Brandon Vera in the main event of UFC 105 on Nov. 14.
Ever since The Magazine put Chuck Liddell on its cover in May 2007, it has been consistent in shining a bit of the sports spotlight on MMA. Nice to see two of the sport’s bigger names featured in this unique issue.
Source: MMA Fanhouse
Director Steven Soderbergh Talks About Gina
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Alex Billington did an interview with Steven Soderbergh during the Toronto Film Festival, mostly centred around his film “The Informant” which stars Matt Damon. Here’s an excerpt from the interview, where he talks about his next project with Gina Carano:
Talking a bit about Matt Damon, and I just love him in general, you work with him so much, but you also often cast unknown actresses in films like The Girlfriend Experience and yet you brought back Matt for this. I was wondering if you’ve ever considered a vice versa of that situation where you bring in someone new for a big studio feature.
Soderbergh: Well, I’m about to do that now. I’m building a whole movie around Gina Carano so I love doing that. In that case I just felt like why aren’t there more women around who can carry a gun? It seems to be a very small list and she’s really intriguing, and so the whole idea is to kind of — as we did with Sasha but on a very different scale with a very different intent. Let’s build something around her and sort of wind her in to it and take advantage of what she is and what she can do. That’s kind of fun. It can be scary and for people who are financing films it’s a sort of nervous-making proposition because there’s not a built-in movie audience for her but in this case I feel she’s actually got– she has a following and I feel like she’s someone who I think is going to emerge in some way and I feel like well, let’s be the first because if it wasn’t us, I feel like it would be somebody would be coming to her and saying, “You should be in a movie.”
Source: Firstshowing.net
