GIRL POWER
Mixed martial arts is a wildly popular sport worldwide — and women in SA are getting in on the action too
Rocking to and fro, heel to toe, the two fighters circle each other, feinting strikes here and there, gloves raised defensively. Then, fast as lightning, a foot lashes out at shoulder height and clips the smaller woman on the chin; she shakes her blonde ponytail, momentarily stunned.
This is not a fight; it’s a technical sparring match, designed to train the eye to anticipate an opponent’s blows. But the two young women are engaged in serious training for what is widely recognised as the most brutal professional martial arts style — mixed martial arts or MMA.
For both fighters — compact amateur newcomer Steph Erasmus and lean Jada Ketley, a titled professional fighter transitioning to MMA — actual purse-bearing fights are still some way off. Ahead lies a punishing training regimen in which both Erasmus, having no prior fighting experience, and Ketley, who has to adapt her highly stylised traditionalist format to MMA’S dynamic environment, will develop their own signature moves.
In a sporting field that boasts several styles that reach back centuries and are shrouded in myth and tradition, MMA is the rowdy new kid on the block. But over a few decades the sport has eclipsed established forms to become perhaps the world’s most popular fighting form, second only to boxing.
A fighter’s MMA career may well last longer than a boxer’s. This is because MMA — despite its hardcore reputation — is a combination of upright striking and floor grappling techniques that “tends to leave fighters less punch-drunk”, says Ketley, 23.
A former model, Ketley originally had no interest in martial arts. Hailing from Australia’s Gold Coast, she had spent seven years living in Thailand. Despite her parents both being karate instructors