Issue 122
December 2014
Why unassuming Scottish Ultimate Fighter 20 cast member Joanne Calderwood was born to fight
ALIASES: JoJo, Dr Kneevil
AGE: 27
PRO DEBUT: 2012
PRO RECORD: 8-0
TEAM: Dinky Ninjas fight team
DIVISION: Women’s Strawweight
HEIGHT: five-foot-six
STYLE: Muay Thai
It’s not when Joanne Calderwood tells you she’d “rather die” than let her family or teammates down in the cage that you realize she’s a born fighter. Nor is it when the Muay Thai specialist explains she doesn’t care about money as long as she has enough to live and train. It starts to dawn on you as The Ultimate Fighter 20 cast member reveals it isn’t aggression that’s won all eight of her MMA fights (half via strikes), only that she’s “determined to win and to win in the best way I can. And that involves hitting them really, really hard.” But, you truly see it when you look at everything: that cerebral fight style, stone-cold pragmatism and athlete’s focus. It’s written through the Scottish strawweight’s present and past that she’s an ideal match for this fighting life. A life that one day may include gold.
Of course, you wouldn’t guess it from the delicate voice the former nursing support worker uses to communicate all the above. It’s the same mouse-like whisper that makes it easy to understand why the 27-year-old wasn’t worried about being portrayed negatively on TUF (“I know I’m a good person”), but hard to fathom why on earth she, as a 13-year-old girl, ever agreed to attend the Muay Thai session with younger brother, Jordan, that lead to a career as a prizefighter.
“I didn’t really have any expectations when I went along to my first class – I didn’t even know what Muay Thai was. That could probably answer the question,” laughs Calderwood.
Back then, in 2000, she was a competitive swimmer, having dabbled in gymnastics. But something felt right in that lesson, she says. “I don’t know if it was getting to batter my little brother for a wee while.”
Calderwood already knew she preferred hands-on activities, finding school work “frustrating” when teachers expected more of her after tutoring her more academically inclined sister, Jemma, two years Joanne’s senior and now a math teacher.
Striking, for some reason, made perfect sense. ‘JoJo’ couldn’t have been more eager to attend Muay Thai, and after a few years classes lead to inter-club fights, then to real bouts. She recalls: “When I had my first professional fight I can remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is amazing,’ and that it was different to the inter-club. Something probably clicked then.” The quiet girl from Kilmarnock was addicted. “Maybe it was me winning at the end of it,” Calderwood giggles. “I thought, ‘I’ve actually won something.’” As her successes continued, it became clear: she was a natural.
To start taking things seriously she turned to Glasgow’s Griphouse Gym, and its Dinky Ninjas fight team. She’s never left, even getting engaged to fellow fighter and coach James Doolan along the way.
It was also there she switched careers from Muay Thai to MMA after seeing the successes her teammates were finding in the cage. Some, like head coach Paul McVeigh, were even winning titles in top European promotions such as Cage Warriors. The status and respect that accompanied the Cage Warriors belt was something she pined for, yet couldn’t find among Muay Thai’s alphabet soup of championships – a few of which the 19-2 standout already owned.
“In Thai I always wanted to fight the best girl Thai boxer but most of the time you would never get that due to politics, or them not wanting to fight you,” she explains of her impulse to prove herself. “But in MMA, like Invicta and the UFC, you’re in there with the rest of the girls who are the best at your weight in the world.”
After winning three in a row, the 115lb’er was recruited by Invicta, the premier women’s promotion. ‘JoJo’ won all four of her bouts, but before she could fight for that much-coveted gold she accepted an invite to TUF 20 – the first-ever all-female season of the UFC reality series, and the only one to ever award a title belt to the winner of its 16-fighter bracket. It was that chance to be the best in the world that spurred her to do the show (which was filmed at the UFC Training Center in Las Vegas for six weeks over July and August). “Before the UFC it was Invicta and I was there to win that title,” she says. “Now it’s the same goal but different organization.”
As soon as Calderwood was announced as a cast member she was marked as one of the hot favorites to succeed in doing that: becoming TUF and UFC champion, and attaining the goal that made her leave Muay Thai. But whether defending that belt or picking up the hunt for it is in her future, it seems she’s already got that vital champion’s mentality. “After a fight I’m always like, ‘I need to watch it. I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that, she landed a punch, how can I avoid that next time?’” And she’s effortlessly fearless to boot: “The only thing that scares me is not performing.”
Dedicated and determined with an innate aptitude for combat? Calderwood was simply born to fight.
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