Issue 120
October 2014
Former multi-time world boxing champion Holly Holm hasn’t signed with the UFC to furnish Ronda Rousey with another pay day. She’s here to prove she’s worthy of UFC gold.
NEED2 KNOW
Alias: ‘Preacher’s daughter’
Age: 32
Pro debut: 2011
Pro record: 7-0
Team: Jackson-Wink
Division: women’s bantamweight
Height: five-foot-eight
Style: striking
At 16 years of age, Holly Holm heard from a friend about an aerobics class run by Mike Winkeljohn in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and decided to check it out. Skeptical at first, she figured supplementing her busy schedule of soccer, swimming and gymnastics with a spot of aerobics wouldn’t be a bad idea, so off she went.
“It was a fun and intense class,” she recalls to FO. “Mike made all the fighters do it. It would get their cardio going and, rather than having to find their own motivation to go out and run, they would just come in, do that, and it would turn out to be a very intense workout.”
A mere aerobics teacher to her at the time, Holm knew little of Winkeljohn’s background in fight sports. “Eventually I started sparring and that led to an amateur fight. I just wanted to try it one time to see what it was like, but after the first fight I was totally hooked.”
The adventurous all-rounder from Bosque Farms refused to look back after that initial spar. Gone were thoughts of kicking balls, diving in pools or vaulting apparatus. “I think what really made me realize this was something I loved was that every time the soccer season finished, I looked forward to it,” she says.
Under the guidance of Winkeljohn, Holm initially dabbled in kickboxing. She racked up an amateur record of 6-0-2 and made her professional debut in June 2002. Before that night, however, she had dropped kicks in favor of just punches and decided to box.
Holm made her pro boxing debut in January 2002 and would eventually compete 35 times over the course of a glittering 11-year career. During this time, she’d bag IBA, WIBA and WBF light welterweight titles, WIBA, WBC and IFBA welterweight titles, as well as even more straps at light-middleweight.
A dominant force in the female game, Holm became defined by the titles she won with her fists. But she did so while boxing out of a gym chock-full of mixed martial artists. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that at some point cursory glances across the gym floor would turn into something more meaningful.
“I’d train with my MMA teammates and find myself wanting to get more involved with it,” she admits. “It seems weird to some people for me to just suddenly jump into MMA, but I’ve been surrounded by MMA my entire boxing career. It’s not something that’s super new to me.
“I haven’t reached that point yet in my fighting career where I’m sick of getting up and going to train. Of course there are some days that are tougher than others, but it’s still mostly fun for me. I always pay attention to my body and make sure I’m doing things I’m passionate about.
“I just want to go where my heart is and, right now, my heart is very much in MMA.”
By way of proof, Holm stopped boxing in 2013, bowing out with a win over Mary McGee, and has been able to call herself a professional mixed martial artist since March 2011. What’s more, in the space of just three years she has won seven consecutive fights, six via stoppage, and landed a multi-fight deal with the UFC.
And you know what that means. Already fans have entered Holm into the Ronda Rousey sweepstakes. Already they’re debating whether or not her punching skills, unparalleled in the women’s game, can finally solve the Rousey riddle.
“I’m impressed with Ronda,” says Holm. “She’s been a great crossover star for women’s MMA. And, despite her grappling experience and skills on the ground, she’s obviously putting a lot of time into her stand-up. Her last fight was an early stoppage and she legitimately dropped her.
“She’s putting a lot of hard work into all aspects of her game and that gives me inspiration to do the same. I also want to improve and be a threat wherever a fight goes. I don’t just want to be known as a stand-up fighter and I’m sure she doesn’t just want to be known as a grappler, either.”
It’s only a matter of time before Rousey and Holm contest UFC bantamweight gold, so says the script. They’re on a collision course. Grappler versus boxer. But Holm is in no rush.
“If you don’t want to beat the best and be the best, this is definitely not the right career for you,” she adds. “You have to want to be number one. I look at that title fight as something I want, but I wouldn’t want to go in there and have a loss. I’d want to go in there and win.
“If I had it my way, I’d want to get my feet wet before taking that fight. But if that fight was in front of me now, and the title was on the line, I would never say no. I’d train for it, believe in myself and give 100%.
“I’m just going to take whatever is handed to me. That’s what I did in boxing and it worked out well for me.” Time will tell. But we can’t wait.
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