Julie Kedzie's nose bleeds again, and her hair's a mess. Wisps of it have come free from her tight cornrows. She works hard to catch her breath.
Still, the professional mixed martial arts fighter beams like a cheerleader at the top of the pyramid. It's a clear case of "You should see the other guy."
The referee has called a stop to Kedzie's fight with Julia Berezekova at the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The packed venue erupts as Kedzie raises her arms in victory.
And so begins an article by my friend, Susan Brackney (Article has been copied at the bottom of this article FELLAS!). I point the article out because not only is this a focus piece on women's MMA, but it can be found in an issue of Indianapolis Woman.
Brackney's article is more the exception to the rule at this point, but I believe MMA has a certain appeal towards women that isn't available through other sports. You don't have the complex rules of traditonal stick-and-ball sports. (note: I am not a sexist, nor do I believe women are incapable of understanding what goes on at a sporting event. However, our culture heavily leans sports towards men, and if you don't grow up watching sports, it's harder to understand what is going on. For instance, most Americans have no idea what is going on in a cricket match, male of female. End defensive rant.) Fighters aren't covered head-to-toe like in football and, to an extent, baseball. While it's as violent as boxing, you don't have many scenarios where guys get knocked down and get back up over-and-over making even the most manly of men squirmish.
While old-school boxing guys may see the grappling element of MMA as two guys rolling around in pseudo-homo erotic lovemaking, I believe it is exactly what attracts females to the sport over boxing. No longer are you simply watching two guys swinging at each other (an obvious oversimplification of the sweet science), but you are watching a highly strategic fight with a lot more visually obvious skill and technique.
I hope this article is part of a continuing trend of women becoming involved with MMA. Speaking strictly economically, you're adding a gigantic largely-untapped market getting women interested in the sport. Plus, who wouldn't want their girlfriend to sit down and watch some fighting rather than getting glares for sitting on the couch all day on Sunday?
Tough Enough
Julie Kedzie kicks it up a notch in the mixed martial arts world.
By Susan M. Brackney
Julie Kedzie's nose bleeds again, and her hair's a mess. Wisps of it have come free from her tight cornrows. She works hard to catch her breath.
Still, the professional mixed martial arts fighter beams like a cheerleader at the top of the pyramid. It's a clear case of "You should see the other guy."
The referee has called a stop to Kedzie's fight with Julia Berezekova at the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The packed venue erupts as Kedzie raises her arms in victory.
"In the middle of that fight I kind of got this, 'Oh my gosh, I'm getting beat up' feeling, and then, all of a sudden, the tide turned, and I realized that, 'You know, this is going to go my way,'" Kedzie recalls.
Things have been going her way a lot lately. The 27-year-old from Greenwood holds a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do and a blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a ground fighting style emphasizing grappling, joint locks and chokes.
As with the increasingly popular Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts fights, Kedzie's three-round bouts are decided when an opponent loses consciousness or is deemed no longer able to competently defend herself. Fights also can end when one fighter "submits" another. Rather than suffer a torn ligament or broken bone, for instance, an opponent trapped in a particularly inescapable hold will tap her hand in quick succession on the mat or on her opponent to signal her surrender. Finally, any fights going a full three rounds without a knockout or submission are decided by judges' votes.
"Generally my victories come by way of decision or technical knockout," Kedzie explains. "One of my strongest areas is endurance and overpowering people. I get them into positions where they just can't fight back anymore."
A fast talker and quick to smile, Kedzie continues, "I'd like to change things so that I actually knock people out, but that hasn't happened for me yet." Her eyes brighten with the thought.
Getting attention
Sports commentators have dubbed Kedzie, as ebullient as she is tough, "the cheerleader on crack."
At five feet, five inches and weighing 135 pounds, Kedzie looks muscular and compact. Though she has yet to render an opponent unconscious, she quickly has advanced in her sport.
Just three years into her professional fighting career, Kedzie found herself brawling in the first women's mixed martial arts fight shown on Showtime last year. It was the first such women's event ever aired on cable TV.
Still, Kedzie didn't necessarily set out to break new ground, and she hadn't always dreamed of being a pro fighter. Born in Chicago, she grew up steeped in academia. When she was about 12, Kedzie's family moved to Bloomington, Ind., so her mother could pursue a doctorate in neurobiology from Indiana University.
Kedzie and her sister, Jenny Raff, were naturally voracious readers, and, Raff says, "Everybody expected Julie would eventually go to graduate school to get an English degree because she really loved literature."
Kedzie did earn a bachelor's degree in English from IU, but, laughing, she confesses, "I've never picked up my diploma. It's over there, but I owe, like $15 to the bursar before I can get it ... I have to go pay for that at some point."
Aside from a love of learning, Kedzie's parents instilled in their daughters an appreciation for physical activity. "I've been training in the martial arts since I was about 4 or 5," Kedzie says. "My father put me in tae kwon do, and I excelled in it and kept training in it throughout my life."
An early fan of the UFC, Kedzie first was exposed to women's professional mixed martial arts at a friend's house.
"First we were watching I think it was the Ken Shamrock versus Tito (Ortiz) fight, and then my friend put in this DVD called Hook N Shoot Revolution, and I saw these female fighters doing mixed martial arts. I was like, 'I could be doing this. I could be fighting this way!' I was just blown away by it."
Part of the sport's appeal? Combining kicks and throws, boxing, clinch-fighting and wrestling. Mixed martial arts presented Kedzie, who had, by now, nearly exhausted her study of tae kwon do, with a new challenge. Incorporating three five-minute rounds for men and three three-minute rounds for women, mixed martial arts fighting also requires marked stamina, conditioning and mental toughness.
The new pursuit suited her in other ways too. "I have kind of a more muscular physique. It's not the typical woman's. I've got some muscle on me, so this was sort of the sport that fit me," Kedzie says.
A different path
After graduating from IU, Kedzie moved in with her sister in Greenwood and began her mixed martial arts training in earnest.
"(My sister) was always wondering why I didn't go to law school or something like that with my degree because most of my family goes on to higher education. You know, it's kind of a source of pride for my family," Kedzie says. "But when she realized how far I wanted to take this and how what I'm doing is an art to me, she backed me 100 percent. I'll always be grateful to her - especially in my hungry years - for taking care of me."
Kedzie worked several different jobs after college, including the area GNC and a fitness center, and she trained with IU's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Club and at Monroe County Martial Arts in Bloomington. Eventually, she taught kickboxing at Indiana Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Greenwood in exchange for more advanced jiu-jitsu training.
"She would get up really early in the morning, and then do cardio at the gym and then she'd go and train basically most of the afternoon and the evening," Raff says.
That training paid off.
"It would've helped me to have more of an amateur career before I went pro right away, but there really weren't any amateur women to fight, so my first mixed martial arts fight was professional," Kedzie says.
Just a year after watching Hook N Shoot Revolution, she was invited to fight in the Evansville-based Hook N Shoot tournament. "I won by arm bar, and they actually took that fight and put it in the Revolution II DVD, so, for my first fight I came full circle. I was watching the DVD, and then my first fight goes on the second DVD. It was wonderful," she says.
But not everyone has been so keen to see Kedzie's fights.
