Issue 115
June 2014
Alexis Davis has gone from bashful art-lover to top contender in the UFC bantamweight division. Now she's stepping under the spotlight to fight superstar champion Ronda Rousey.
Alexis Davis admits to being a small-town girl who was “a wallflower” as a budding teenager. She grew up in Port Colborne, a city on the edge of Lake Erie, Ontario, population just 18,500.
Sport wasn’t really her thing – it was art and drawing. But she was an outdoors type, a “bit of a tomboy,” she explains. Contained rather than coy.
The idea of being a sportswoman, let alone a professional fighter, was not really on her radar. She loved painting.
“When I was younger, I was very quiet. I was kind of like that wallflower girl, and I liked to keep to myself,” she explains to Fighters Only. Hard to envisage against the tough battler who has not taken a backward step in her 3-0 UFC career, with victories over Rosi Sexton, Liz Carmouche and Jessica Eye.
The rise of Davis to the point where she is now next in line to fight for the women’s UFC bantamweight title against current champ Ronda Rousey at UFC 175 in July, would have been unthinkable just over a decade ago.
Aged 17, when Ronda Rousey was competing at the Beijing Olympics, winning a bronze medal as a judoka representing the United States, Davis was directionless: a teenager who, like so many others on the brink of leaving high school education, wondered what she would do with her life.
It was at that age Davis had noticed a local martial arts academy, Dave Dayboll’s jiu-jitsu school, in her home town in Canada.
It had piqued her curiosity. Day after day she had walked by the place which proclaimed it wanted “to make fighters better human beings.”
Yet Davis was so bashful, it took her two years to pluck up the courage to walk through the doors. But when she did, encouraged by a friend who went along with her, she found cornucopia. It was her niche.
Those early years seem incongruous with the teak-tough mixed martial artist who brushes blood off her face like most would wipe perspiration from theirs in a sauna.
Eschewing the idea of employment with her mother’s book sales business, the gym quickly became her home, and within a year they had employed her. She worked hard and relentlessly, competing in jiu-jitsu, under Dayboll.
Seeing women around her training in MMA, she decided, aged 21, to plunge into it. Her first fight was against current UFC talent Sarah Kaufman. Held in Winnipeg, Davis lost via third-round TKO.
However, the defeat only strengthened her resolve to continue, she reckons.
Davis then pursued the sport tirelessly, honing her kickboxing, striking and Muay Thai. Eight years on and her record of 16-5 is testimony to the Canadian’s hard work and resilience.
Now on a 9-1 streak, Davis rightfully deserves her position below recovering Cat Zingano in the 135lb division, and her chance against Rousey.
She told Fighters Only it felt “amazing to be involved in this period in women's MMA.”
The interest in the women’s division in its first 16 months in the UFC has been extraordinary. And Davis admits that she has been taken aback by it.
“I can honestly say I didn't think this was going to happen in my time, being that I've done it for a few years,” she explains. “I'll be hitting 30 this year and I thought by the time women’s MMA became a big thing in the UFC, I'd be long retired.”
The increased attention does bring back those ‘wallflower’ moments. “I'm not so good with the attention but I have enjoyed it, just the experience of it. There was a time when I wasn't quite as good with it but now it's slowly making me grow as a person. The extra exposure has been a great experience for me personally.
“I also love the fact I get to travel to new places and meet new people.” That has meant – with progress in her career – a move in climates from Port Colborne to NorCal.
She is there with her partner, Flavio Meier, a BJJ teacher, practitioner and competitor. She has three step-children in the relationship.
“I live in San Jose, California, now, but after my fights I go home and see my family. There is a point where everyone is excited to see me and they are like, 'Wow, you are in the UFC.'
“It's the total opposite that anyone or even myself thought would happen in my life. Then the other side of it is that there are the people I grew up with. I'm just Alexis, the girl they went to high school with, and I like that grounded thing.”
After her decision victory over Jessica Eye at UFC 170, Davis proclaimed her desire to fight Rousey, a few seats away at the post-event news conference dais. On her radar is also avenging her two losses to Sarah Kaufman.
“I feel like I'm one of the strongest female fighters and I wanted that shot," she says. “I've been fighting hard, had a lot of tough fights and they don't give me walkovers. They give me tough fights. Now I've got my chance.”
With her title shot now official, it looks like the quiet girl from the backwaters has a chance to make a very loud statement.
GREATER EXPECTATIONS
Davis has impressed strength and conditioning coach Jonathan Chaimberg, who works with Rory MacDonald and Georges St Pierre in Montreal. “Alexis has been around for a while now, and you have to be impressed by her,” he says.
“I remember her fighting a fighter of mine – Valerie Letourneau. It was probably her fourth professional fight back in the day. Look at her record and what she has done; Alexis has fought a Who’s Who of all the fighters out there, she comes to scrap, and she’s always improving her game. I thought she wasn't far away from a fight with Ronda.”
The argument lies in whether Davis can match Rousey on the ground. In the stand-up, there is little doubt she would trouble the incumbent champion, and has the ability to fight through an opponent. Davis will get her chance to prove that she's the one to hand Rousey her first defeat when the two headline UFC 175 in July.
