Issue 209

September 2024

Dakota Ditcheva has quickly established herself as the hottest prospect in the world of MMA, and she spoke to Fighters Only’s Paul Browne in an exclusive interview about her rise to the pinnacle of the sport.

Dakota Ditcheva grew up on the mats. Her earliest memories are filled with the sound of punches hitting pads and the rhythm of sparring sessions. While many professional MMA fighters drift into the sport as young adults, Ditcheva was born into an environment set up to provide her with everything she needed to reach the top of the sport. 

“She was a world champion in full contact karate, kickboxing, and Muay Thai,” she says, speaking about her mother, Lisa Howarth. “Obviously, there was a lot less females competing back in the day when she was fighting, so she just took fights wherever she could. She flew all over the world, she fought in the States just like me, just jumping all over any and every opportunity. Then she became a parent. She had my older brother, and then I came along afterwards. At that time, she owned her own gym back in Manchester, and I was pretty much born into that. When I was 2 or 3 years old, I was pushing my doll’s prams around the gym while my mum was coaching on the mats.”

COMBAT SPORTS FROM DAY DOT

Ditcheva’s mother is one of the UK’s most successful female fighters, but she never saw her mother compete. “She still fought when she had my older brother,” she says. “But after I came along, she stopped competing and was just coaching, so she was still very much involved in the sport. I was always around the gym, very used to being in that environment. I started training, and when I was 4 years old, I did a few inter-club fights. We still have them on film. I had about three fights but then I just stopped. It wasn’t something I was overly interested in, and it wasn’t something that my mum wanted me to do either. She was very much like, ‘Stay in sport, stay active, but whatever sport you want to do is up to you. You don’t need to go with Thai boxing just because I’ve done it.’ That wasn’t something that she pushed me into at all, so I didn’t really put on the gloves again until I was 12 years old.”

While Ditcheva veered away from combat sports for a while, she remembers always being involved in sports. 

“I had done gymnastics, football, netball,” she recalls. “I tried all sorts of sports. My mum just wanted me to be in any sport but to find my own way, and if she could choose herself, I think she would have wanted me to be an actor or a singer. But I came back to martial arts when I was 12 or 13 and that’s kind of where my journey in this sport really began. Being coached by my mum at her gym.”

FAST PROGRESSION

Ditcheva switched her focus to MMA and quickly showed an interest in stepping into the ring. 

“When I started back training, I decided pretty quickly I wanted to fight, so I did a few inter-club fights,” she says. “But my mum had a massive name within the sport, so it wasn’t like I could just start as a total beginner. It was very much like everybody knew ‘This is Lisa Howarth’s daughter,’ so as soon as I turned up for a fight, there were a lot of eyes and a lot of pressure on me from the beginning. I remember when I was 13, my first fight back was against the top girl in the country at the time, and it was for a belt. My mum believed in me so put me in for it. The fight ended up in a no-contest because I was bitten on the arm. I was headbutted. I was punched in the face (there were no headshots allowed in the fight). I had a chipped tooth, which is a crazy situation for your debut fight, but it didn’t put me off, so I knew then that I was made for the sport, that’s for sure. I had a big lump on my eye afterwards, and my mum said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I loved it.’ And I think it’s very important that my mum didn’t push me into it all those years ago because that’s probably why I adore it so much now. It’s not something that was forced on me. From that point on, I progressed really quickly. I was fighting girls who were a lot older than me. I think I went into the IFMA World Championships as an amateur, and I won gold four years in a row doing that, aged 12, 13,14, and 15. I won all four years in a row.”

MAKING THE MMA SWITCH

That early baptism of fire armed Ditcheva with the skills required to perform under pressure.

“I won the World Championships those four years in a row, and in my last year, I was awarded ‘Female Fighter of the Tournament’ out of all the various weight classes,” she recalls. “I picked up awards outside of the sport itself, too, I got the ‘Pride of Britain’ award and ‘Young Athlete of the Year.’ I picked up a European title, a British title, an English one. I just kind of hoovered up a lot of accolades. I was top of the rankings worldwide, too.”

Seeking new challenges, Ditcheva transitioned from Muay Thai into MMA in her early twenties and remained unbeaten. It turned out to be a smart decision. 

“I was approached by one of the Thai boxing coaches that my mum knows quite well,” she says. “He’s been in the sport as long as her. He told her that he coaches at an MMA gym, and that was where the sport was headed. He told me I’d be very popular in the MMA world. I’d be very good at it, and I should try a little bit of jiu jitsu. It was something I was watching anyway. I always watched some UFC fights as a fan. I was always interested in it and wanted to try it, but hadn’t really pulled the trigger. When he said that to me, I bit the bullet and went to try my first jiu jitsu session, and I absolutely loved it. I also think I was reaching a point in Thai boxing where I was feeling like I wanted something more and to make a career out of it? I wasn’t sure Muay Thai was the direction I would go in to make a living or make a lot of money. I felt that MMA was probably a better option in that regard. Moving with the times.”

AN MMA NATURAL

Ditcheva believes the way she fights is suited to MMA. 

“I wasn’t fighting with a traditional Thai style,” she explains. “Thai is obviously a little slower, they tap the foot, they point score, but me and my mum have never really been like that. We have more of a European style, up on our toes, boxing-heavy, so that’s probably why I took to MMA so well. My style kind of suited it better.”

Ditcheva won her first five professional MMA fights, which made her one of the most exciting prospects in the UK scene. She signed with the PFL and picked up first-round TKO victories in her opening two bouts, then went through opponents to win the European title. Ditcheva is happy she got the chance to compete regularly. 

“Last year was obviously a very successful one,” she says. “But I also enjoyed the year’s training and just the experience of being in that tournament. I think one of the main things that made me happier was having regular fights and knowing my schedule of when I’m fighting next. I feel that was one of the best parts of last year. I knew what dates I was fighting. If I went through each round, I then knew my next date and could plan around that. Sometimes, in this sport, you can get a bit lost chasing fights, and you don’t know where you are or what you’re up to, so that was one of the things I loved about it. And the achievement itself (winning the PFL European Tournament), obviously my career has been very rushed. When I moved over to MMA, I thought, ‘Right, this is a fresh start, I can learn the ground game, I can start all over again and take my time building up a completely different fanbase and do it at my own pace,’ but that didn’t happen. I think I was being a little naïve. But it’s been nice looking back on how it’s all played out. I had a handful of amateur fights, I took a couple of professional ones, then all of a sudden, I’m in the PFL European tournament, thinking, ‘Let’s conquer this,’ and now I’ve already moved onto the next challenge. So, I feel like my career is playing out exactly as I hoped it would, just maybe a bit quicker than I expected.”

GETTING A RETURN ON HER INVESTMENT

The financial freedom that comes with winning $100,000 via her European PFL Championship victory has allowed Ditcheva to take the next step in her development. She now trains full-time at American Top Team alongside some of the most well-known fighters in the sport and appreciates that to become the best female fighter, she has to work alongside the best training partners. 

“I’ve been coming to ATT now since 2022,” she says. “I used to come here just for training camps, arriving here eight weeks out from my fight. Sometimes I’d be a little bit last minute, maybe five or six weeks out. But I feel like you learn the most during training when you’re not in camp. So, I knew at some point I needed to make the move and be here full-time, and when I won the tournament last year, that was a decision that I made for this tournament this year. What with having an extra fight to navigate in the tournament and with it being at a completely different level of opponent, I needed to be here at ATT from the start. At the end of January, I moved into my apartment in Florida, and I said from the beginning that I wouldn’t go home until the tournament was finished and I’m arriving home as a world champion, so that’s what I’m doing. I went home for a week to see family, but I’m back here to work. I love life here. Training every day, sunshine, the place is just perfect for me.”

THE NEXT LEVEL

Ditcheva’s achievements in 2023 saw her name included in this year’s PFL global flyweight tournament. Her first-round TKO victories over Lisa Mauldin, Chelsea Hackett, and Jena Bishop have cemented her status as one of the world’s most outstanding talents. She will face Taila Santos before the end of the year in a ‘Winner Takes All’ bout, with the PFL world title and a $1 million prize on the line. Many fighters have been critical of her and the PFL. They insist she has been handed an easier path to the final and that the company has protected her to build up her superstar status. Undeterred by the noise, ‘Dangerous’ insists she’s happy to let her fists do the talking. 

“I always answer the questions after I’ve proven my point in the cage,” she says. “They all talk so much. What a lot of people don’t understand is that fighting is a business. As much as it’s a hobby, you can’t do this as a hobby when it’s your full-time career. That’s what people need to understand. When they see me being promoted a lot and my face is everywhere, they seem to think PFL are just trying to make money off this girl or whatever, but I’m still proving my level in the cage, and that’s what some people miss.

HER BIGGEST TEST

“My next opponent (Taila Santos), everybody takes her seriously because she’s already been in the UFC, and she’s fighting all of the big names, the experienced names,” she smiles. “But I’ve just stopped Jena Bishop, her last opponent, and that’s apparently still not good enough? You’ll never please everybody and I’ve found that out this year. And I’m not a big fan of social media anyway because you do get negative comments all the time. It’s very satisfying for me to keep proving my point in the cage, and that’s what I’ll continue to do. Once I’ve proven my point, I’ll grab the mic, and I’ll say a few things and I’ll go back to the gym and keep working hard. People can say what they want and try to get under my skin, but I’m just focusing on putting in the hard work and maintaining my focus.”

While Ditcheva insists she’s not looking past Santos, she believes in her ability to make that next step and become the PFL flyweight champion. 

“This year, I’ll be world champion,” she says adamantly. “So, there’ll be a lot of different opportunities heading my way going into 2025. I feel like the sport is changing so much in regard to the opportunities that are coming, especially being with PFL. They’re very lenient in some ways. You see how Francis Ngannou has been boxing, and now he’s going to be on this PPV card in Saudi Arabia, they’re now doing big fights in Riyadh. There’s just so many new opportunities coming into the sport all the time. Sometimes, I feel like I don’t want to plan too far ahead because the landscape changes so quickly in MMA. My first priority is to become world champion this year. There’s a lot of girls who the PFL have signed due to them taking over Bellator. That’s another big positive for me at the weight I compete at. The next five years is going to be spent either relaxing in my apartment or in the gym, working to get better and better. I’m just 26 years old, and I don’t want to be wishing my life away, but I’m aiming to still be world champion in five years, beating all of these girls up and shutting up the haters in the process. Even the most confident fighters doubt themselves, right? So, in 2023, I proved a lot to myself. This year, in the global tournament, I’ve proven a lot to myself again. I’ve seen how much I’ve progressed and developed over the year, both in the gym and in the cage, and I think that’s the main thing for me. As long as I keep progressing, keep getting better overall in every part of my game, I’ll be happy. The improvements I make in the gym will be carried into the PFL cage, and I’m going to keep putting on these brilliant fights and performances.”

THE NEXT STEPS TO GREATNESS

While the world championship and $1 million prize are the stepping stone to Ditcheva’s quest for glory, she is conscious of the legacy she would like to leave behind. She aims to show the next generation what possibilities await them within MMA. 

“I was a big Ronda Rousey fan back when I first started fighting,” she smiles. “I always have been. She’s got that relationship with her mum, just like me, and she had that other side to her, too. She looked pretty sometimes. She wasn’t afraid to dress up and embrace her femininity, and that’s something that I looked up to. I’m a completely different person when I’m outside the cage, and I think that was really important that I had someone like that to look up to and see that it’s ok to show both sides of your persona. I can wear my hair down and dress nice outside of the cage and I can put on gloves and do my job when I’m supposed to. I think that’s probably why I took to her so much, she definitely inspired me. And obviously, there’s Joanna Jedrzejczyk. She did the same Muay Thai tournaments as me when she was younger. Watching her and Valentina Shevchenko coming from Thai boxing and transitioning over to MMA and seeing how well they’ve altered their fighting style to suit MMA inspired me so much. There’s been so many female fighters over the years that I’ve looked up to, and I think that it’s my job now as the ‘next generation’ to keep doing that and inspire young girls the same way because I know how much of an impact it made on my life so that’s what I want to carry on doing.”

Dakota Ditcheva's quest for greatness is far from over, but her journey has already set her apart as a force to be reckoned with in combat sports. As she looks ahead to the next chapter of her career, Dakota’s unwavering hunger for success leaves little doubt that her best is yet to come. The world is watching, and Dakota Ditcheva is ready to make her mark.