Female MMA Fighters

Looking for some stuff on the web, I ran into two different stories about two different women that I think really shows the drive and determination behind female mixed martial artists.
Female MMA is not easy, nor is it an easy road to take. Don't get me wrong, it's hard on the men as well. But the women have to undergo the same training and punishment and still have to deal with being a female in what is basically a man's sport.
But like I said, these two ladies show what it takes to compete.

First, a story from Portland Oregon about female MMA fighter Jody De Simone.
http://wweek.com/editorial/3509/12054/

Then an in depth story about female MMA fighter Cindy Hales from Seattle.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-01-07/news/spoiling-for-a-fight/1

Maggie Q

Maggie Q, born Margaret Denise Quigley (born May 22, 1979), is an American actress and former fashion model. She initially gained fame in Hong Kong.

Q was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to an American father of French, Polish and Irish descent, and a Vietnamese mother. Her parents met while her father was stationed in Vietnam. Maggie is the youngest of 5 children. She has two sisters and two half-siblings from her mother's previous marriage in Vietnam. She still visits Hawaii with her family. After graduating from Mililani High School she travelled to Japan and Hong Kong to earn money as a fashion model. In 1998 she got her first role in a Chinese-language TV series, and she has been acting ever since.

While still relatively unfamiliar to audiences in the United States, she has achieved celebrity status in Hong Kong and elsewhere in East Asia. Because of her non-Chinese heritage, many of her Asian film appearances are in English or dubbed in the Chinese language. Her big breakthroughs into the film world came when she bagged the lead roles in the Hong Kong action thrillers Gen-Y Cops and Naked Weapon, in which she played the sexy but vulnerable martial artist assassin Charlene Ching. She has also played the titular role of Harmony in the German-Singapore telemovie collaboration Das Haus Der Harmonie, opposite leading Singaporean actress Fann Wong.

Recently, she starred in her biggest Hollywood role to date alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III. She played Zhen, the only female member of his elite IMF team. Maggie plays one of the computer-hacking extortionists in the 2007 Bruce Willis action thriller, Live Free Or Die Hard, the fourth film in the popular Die Hard franchise. On August 29, 2007, Balls of Fury opened nationwide in the U.S. starring Maggie as the ping pong paddle-wielding niece of table tennis guru Master Wong (James Hong, who I'm beginning to think is an immortal.)


technorati tags:mixed martial arts ,mixed martial art ,mixed martial arts fights ,mixed martial arts fighting ,mixed martial arts news ,female mixed martial arts ,martial arts karate ,martial arts ,martial art ,japanese martial arts ,filipino martial arts ,shaolin martial arts ,chinese martial arts

Dr. Laura Schlessinger - Black Belt

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a martial arts black belt.


"When I do anything, I do it one hundred percent," she told us, and that is no less true for her religious life than for her martial arts practice (at age fifty, she has a recently attained black belt in karate).
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:IporSP1wqLoJ:www.wie.org/j12/laura.asp+Dr.+Laura+Schlessinger+karate&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

She is a tiny, karate-kickin’ perfect physical specimen, tireless and "hypereducated" (her term).
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:xpwBnN8I1cYJ:choppedliverproductions.com/rants/dr-laura.html+Dr.+Laura+Schlessinger+karate&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

Dr. Laura is a wife, and, of course, she is her kid's mom. She is also a black belt in karate. Whether there is a relation between those two things I will let her say.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:wSxuSF_WC7kJ:www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.177/pub_detail.asp+Dr.+Laura+Schlessinger+karate&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

And she rattled on constantly about taking karate lessons, much like someone who’s, um, found religion. She seemed like a person who could easily cross the line between enthusiasm and obsession.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:HeXX_H2PUd8J:blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2005/11/some_postive_th.html+Dr.+Laura+Schlessinger+karate&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us

Diana Hayden - Martial Arts

Diana Hayden was born on May 1st, 1973 in Hyderabad, India.
She is a former Femina Miss India World 1997, Miss World 1997 and actress.

She first came to attention when she represented India at the 1997 Miss World pageant. Diana became a known face when at 24 she won the crown.
She became the third Indian woman to win the Miss World pageant.
Like the second Indian winner of the crown, Aishwarya Rai, Diana followed up her win by launching an acting career in the Indian film industry and internationally.
She made her debut with a guest appearance (in Holby City, a TV series in 2003) but established herself with the film, Ab Bas! (2004).

An Anglo-Indian, Diana comes from parents who are separated, but her family was still very close-knit.
As a teenager, she was a tomboy, tall (She's five foot eight) and gangly.

Diana also hosts a popular show on the History channel called "Biography".

Diana studies Wu Shu with Master Deepak Das....

"If I am not shooting I do my martial arts. Martial arts keep me fit. It not just helps in the physical strength and appearance but martial arts is also about your mind. It helps in your overall development."
http://www.your-martial-arts-resources.com/martial-arts-celebrities.html

Her teacher, Master Das, is a 4th Dan Black Belt, founder and director of Taoist Power Yoga and a Wu Dang Taoist Traditional Internal Martial Arts Expert.
He also teaches Modern Wu Shu, Tai Chi, Muay Thai and Kick Boxing, Karate, Taoist Power Yoga, San Shou (Chinese Kickboxing) and Mixed Martial Arts.

You can find out more about Diana here:
http://www.dianahayden.com/



Diana Hayden, posted to http://femalemixedmartialartists.blogspot.com/ on 7-15-2007

Cynthia Rothrock - Female Martial Arts

 Cynthia Rothrock (born 8 March 1957) is an American actress specializing in Martial arts films. She was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and was brought up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

She is five-time (and undefeated) World Karate Champion in forms and weapons between 1981 and 1985. These categories are not combat-orientated, being displays of fluidity of movement rather than fighting, and are therefore not segregated into male and female categories but fully open to both sexes.

She holds five Black belts in various Far Eastern martial disciplines, including Tang Soo Do (also "tangsudo", Korean), Tae Kwon Do (Korean), Eagle Claw (Chinese), Wu Shu (contemporary Chinese), and Northern Shaolin (classical Chinese). She also works as a martial arts instructor.

Northern California was her home in 1983 where she worked with the West Coast Demonstration Team. At this time Golden Harvest was searching in Los Angeles for the next Bruce Lee. Rothrock's forms and maneuvers were observed and the Golden Harvest signed a contract with her. It was two years (1985) later that she made her first martial arts movie for them, Huang gu shi jie (also known as Yes Madam or In the Line of Duty Part 2) which also starred Michelle Yeoh. It proved to be a box office success. She ended up staying in Hong Kong until 1988 doing seven films there. She may be the first Caucasian actor that ever had a lead role in a Chinese picture as a "good guy." At the time, the typical role for Caucasian was cast as either the bad guy or as comic relief.

Rothrock became one of the few Caucasian performers to achieve genuine stardom in the local Hong Kong film industry before achieving success in their own country. Producer Pierre David initiated Rothrock's move to the American turf. David offered her a costarring role with Chad McQueen in Martial Law, Rothrock's first U.S. production. For the next ten years led successful career in B-grade action movies. Her films include China O'Brien and China O'Brien 2, Guardian Angel, Honor & Glory, No Retreat, No Surrender 2 and Prince of the Sun amongst a roster of thirty films. Rothrock also appeared as Bertha Jo in the 1997 television film The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion. She was an inspiration for the video game characters Sonya Blade[citation needed] of Mortal Kombat and also King of SNK's The King of Fighters and Art of Fighting games, and lent her voice on the animated series Eek the Cat.

Rothrock's stated that, "throughout my life, I've been opening the door for other women to get involved with this (martial arts movies). I was the first woman to be on the cover of a karate magazine and the first woman to win a men's championship."

technorati tags: Cynthia Rothrock,ufc, media, pride, japan, mixed martial arts, k-1, news, ifl, whaledog, boxing