Fight Game book release - Ian Dean tells story of Cage Warriors women's divisions

Reading, England - Sunday 26th October 2017 

Alistair Hendrie’s Kindle book, Fight Game: The Untold Story of Women’s MMA in Britain, is out now on Amazon. 

The book uncovers the development of the scene and the personalities on the circuit, offering unprecedented insight from fighters such as Joanne Calderwood, Rosi Sexton, Wendy McKenna, Jade Barker-Morge and many more. 

In one passage, Cage Warriors matchmaker Ian Dean opened up about how his promotion energised the scene in July 2013 by signing nine British females including LJ Adams and Laura O’Brien-Howarth. 

“Rosi Sexton called a lot of people’s bluffs,” said Dean. “She contacted a lot of female fighters and asked if they’d like to sign for us. 

“It was quite funny – I think (president) Graham (Boylan) and Rosi had chatted about it more in-depth on their own but one morning Graham just walked into the office and asked how I’d feel about doing more women’s fights. I just said: “Yeah, OK.” We had the database and it went from there.

“I think women were just being overlooked unless a promoter was trying to push someone,” added Dean. “There’s no real incentive sometimes. There’s not a great deal of depth in the divisions and putting on women’s fights isn’t easy – it’s ridiculous. 

“There was a lot of excitement for some of the women when we first made the signings. I’m not going to be patronising and say we’re going to give you opportunities you won’t get anywhere else and all of that kind of thing, but we gave women a chance to really go somewhere.”

Previous press releases for media use can be found here. When providing media coverage for the book, please include the pre-order link.

For more information, media requests, interview requests and review copies, please contact Alistair Hendrie on allyh84@hotmail.com. 

Kind regards, 

Alistair Hendrie
@allyh84