"I fight MMA"
This is then how a typical conversation goes.
"What's that?"
"Mixed Martial Arts"
"Oh like karate?"
Just to make this clear, Mixed Martial Arts is very far from karate. It's an extreme combat sport in which contestants are permitted to use the fighting techniques of wrestling, boxing, and but also those of martial arts such as kickboxing, judo, karate and, my personal favorite, brazilian jiu jitsu.
"No, it's cage fighting."
"Oh so you do UFC?"
This drives me nuts. That's like saying to a high school football player, "You do NFL?"
No, that's not how it works.
Like any other sport, there are multiple levels of MMA. You start out as an amateur, and later on you can get your professional license and move on to fight for organizations such as Strikeforce, Bellator, or the well-known Ultimate Fighting Championship (The UFC).
Now, I'll give you a quick summary of my personal MMA background.
My (ex)boyfriend and I started going to Sandmann's MMA gym, located underneath the Touch of Color tattoo shop. Now at the time I'd played basketball, volleyball, track, soccer, and softball, but MMA was the hardest sport- both physically and mentally- I've ever taken part in. And there was something so addicting about it. Anyway, my boyfriend decided this was not for him and didn't continue coming to practice. I never thought our 4 year relationship would end because of this, but it did, and life moved on.
After over a year of training there, the tattoo shop closed, and the gym closed with it.
I then joined the Legion Fighting Alliance. I've been with them for about 6 months now, and I had my first fight this past summer against Rose Dawson. She was 3-0 (3 wins and 0 losses) I won in the first round with a rear-naked choke.
I wish I had more fights to look back on from my past two years of training, but with school, work, and a lack of female fighters, it's difficult for me to find opponents.
Some of my fight pictures from Vic Coar photography
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