Chicks who kick ass
The Million Dollar Baby has nothing on this gang. Meet the women behind Chicks That Kick Kick what, you may ask? Any butt these masters of Muay Thai want to, by Megan Ogilvie
They spend most nights in the gym, preparing for the fight. The drone of a thumping techno beat drowns out their groans and grunts as they skip rope at breathless speeds, pound out dozens of sit- ups, and work on their deadly technique. These young women are Chicks That Kick, Canada’s first all- female Muay Thai collective, and they have waited more than a year for this fight. With less than two weeks to go, every last training minute counts. The Toronto group is hosting the province’s first all-female Muay Thai Fight Card Oct. 2. Sixteen women Mauy Thai fighters will get a chance to step into the ring for their first sanctioned fight in Ontario. Something the women have been wanting for a long time, says Sofia Ramirez, founder of Chicks That Kick. Muay Thai — also called, more simply, Thai boxing — is often called the deadliest of the martial arts. Muay Thai makes use of a fighter’s eight weapons — the hands, feet, elbows and knees, times two for each, of course — to defeat an opponent. It was first used as a close- combat fighting skill for the battlefield and, in later centuries, became the entertainment of kings. To heighten the drama, and increase the bloodletting, some fighters wrapped their hands in twine and covered them in tar and broken glass — much like the Hanson brothers did with tinfoil, famously, in Slap Shot.
While modern day fighters forgo the glass-covered gloves, Muay Thai is still plenty tough. But the women of Chicks That Kick say that’s what they like most — the toughness. The confidence they glean in fighting carries over into all realms of their life.
“ Muay Thai is a passion for all of us in the group,” says Ramirez, 32, who works in public relations for the Hospital for Sick Children. On a recent Tuesday evening, five Chicks That Kick met for an after- work drink at a trendy King St. W. café.
Slim, sexy and elegantly urban, the five women don’t look like hard- hitting Muay Thai fighters.
Their appearances are one of the biggest misconceptions the women face, says Lucy O’Neill, a junior producer at a Toronto post- production house.
“ It’s not just butchy girls who fight,” she laughs. “ We can be tough and feminine at the same time.” Four years ago, Ramirez turned to Muay Thai as an outlet for her stress during, what she calls, a tough personal time in her life.
At first, she was the only woman in the classes, but slowly she met other young female Muay Thai fighters.
Ramirez decided to get all the women together to find out if they wanted to form an allwoman’s group. They wanted camaraderie in their sport and decided to go all in.
“ We all started brainstorming ideas for a group name,” she says. “ We came up with really bad names, like Warrior Women, Roar — Respect Our Athletic Rights, and Vixens.”