00:00:00
Speaker 1: Right, it's a fight night with a difference, ultimate dirty boxing that sounds rude, almost female. Addition, we'll see South Africa's top female fighters stepping into the ring while raising money. Yes please to help end period poverty and joining us are two of the nights fighters, right, Mishka.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Hi, Hello, darling, how are you? I'm pretty good.
00:00:22
Speaker 1: I'm fabulous, Anisha. Yes, Hello, Hello, Hello, which means that you must be jes Hello, Jess, Hello, and thank you so much for coming in. Okay, so why have I got Who's Megan? Why have I got Meghan on the sheet?
00:00:38
Speaker 3: No?
00:00:39
Speaker 4: Mean didn't end up making it today, so she's taking a bit of a race day.
00:00:43
Speaker 5: Okay, you relax, Meghan, you relax.
00:00:45
Speaker 1: So somebody's going to be fighting Meghan though, that would be me, Mishka, that would be right. First of all, let's get into I am I'm so into women fighting great.
00:00:56
Speaker 5: I'm so so.
00:00:58
Speaker 1: I recently kind of when I say, got into MMA, but I didn't get into it. But but a person enjoys some MMA, so I kind of, by by default I got into it. But actually I like watching the women fighting because we seem to be I don't know.
00:01:12
Speaker 2: More tougher and more aggressive.
00:01:14
Speaker 1: All of that all stuff. Can you, darling, are you able to put your chair up at all? Because I'm literally just thinking. This is like when I phone my mum on on like on FaceTime, and all I can see is the top of her eyebrows. If we get ah, there we go, There we go, Andy, can you do the same, thanks darling.
00:01:31
Speaker 5: How did you get into fighting Michigan?
00:01:34
Speaker 2: Well?
00:01:34
Speaker 4: I started when I was quite young.
00:01:36
Speaker 1: Okay, how Young's young? Do I need to get my big girl into the ring?
00:01:40
Speaker 5: There?
00:01:42
Speaker 4: So I started when I was nine. My mom took me into a kickboxing class and then I just kind of never looked back.
00:01:49
Speaker 5: Wow, yeah, okay, okay.
00:01:52
Speaker 1: And then in terms of but your you're boxing fighting this this is what we're doing?
00:01:55
Speaker 5: No, what are we are we doing?
00:01:56
Speaker 4: Dirty boxing?
00:01:57
Speaker 5: What is that?
00:01:59
Speaker 4: Some boxing with some elbows and some clinchers, with not the standard puffy gloves but a little bit smaller and our fingers are open. So just taking boxing and adding violence.
00:02:15
Speaker 3: So essentially why we went for dirty boxing is that for this event, the idea was to put only females on the card for Warman's Month Rise, and because the pool of female fighters in the western capes quite limited. The idea was to try to merge a couple of fighting styles. So dirty boxing is something that exists in the States already and we were the first to bring it to South Africa.
00:02:37
Speaker 5: And so it allows.
00:02:39
Speaker 3: Women who are trained in Muay Thai, women who are trained in MMA, and women who are trained in boxing to kind of merge in a fighting style that suits everyone. So you can hit in the clinch whereas boxing is no clinch work striking, you can throw elbows, and you're wearing MMA gloves, so it's it's a kind of hybrid style of fighting.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: How do you and someone who's able to move in all those three disciplines though, because if you've got a boxer who's got no MMA fight training, if someone's suddenly throwing an elbow, that.
00:03:10
Speaker 5: Is one percent a stupid question.
00:03:13
Speaker 3: So as a result, there are thirteen fights on the card. Eleven of those are traditional boxing fights and the last two fights which is Any and Mishka, and they're fighting two other ladies from a gym called Tai Holics, so that gym is a muy Thai traditional gym, and so their opponents, Megan and Vernet, are kind of traditional muy Thai fighters, and Annie has a base in muay Thai and MM Mishka's base is kickboxing and MMA, so everyone's kind of merging their styles and meeting in the middle where everyone has an advantage and a disadvantage.
00:03:45
Speaker 1: Okay, Annie, how did you get to be doing what you're doing?
00:03:50
Speaker 6: I've been journy Muitai for quite a long time. I did a few white collar boxing events and then call it the isn't actually a winner after a fight, So I was like, you know, what, if I'm putting all this work in, I'd like to, you know, have my hand. It's it's it's more like, what's what I'm looking for? Like a display, you know?
00:04:12
Speaker 5: Okay?
00:04:14
Speaker 6: And then yeah, joined PFA, did my first Muitai fight with PFA, and yeah, just.
00:04:20
Speaker 2: Been from there, did some MMA, did some boxing.
00:04:22
Speaker 5: So what do you love about it? Wow?
00:04:29
Speaker 2: The discipline, the discipline, the family.
00:04:32
Speaker 6: There's something about putting months into a camp and like stepping into the ring and being able to show all the work that.
00:04:38
Speaker 2: You've done, you know on the night.
00:04:40
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and.
00:04:42
Speaker 2: Just being able to chain with these these amazing women.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: It's so I I never understood I never understood the kind of the UFC stuff. I never I never got it. And then I went to go and see, uh, the the not UFC.
00:04:58
Speaker 5: What do we have here?
00:04:59
Speaker 1: F fight at Graham West in February and we had really good seats and we were sitting right there and I was I was sitting either side of two big fans, and I was like, how am I?
00:05:10
Speaker 5: This was amazing? It was? It was electric. It's you know?
00:05:15
Speaker 1: What was it the other day that I was up at three o'clock in the morning watching a fight? Remember I came in and I was like, yeah, we were up at stupid o'clock, not Drekers. What's his name? Connor McGregor, which was over you watch, yes or one point one?
00:05:31
Speaker 5: What was it?
00:05:32
Speaker 1: One minute and thirty seconds of it? Somebody was very upset about that. It is electric, though, isn't it that there's something about it? And as you say, the discipline from a from a women's point of view, what reaction do you get from people when they tell you that you fight? Because I think that I think people can't get their brains around women fighting.
00:05:51
Speaker 2: You get the typical with minutes do you underspire with me?
00:05:57
Speaker 6: Oh, you're you're so small, you're so cute, Why do you want to fight? Yeah, you know, but with women, it's the support from women is absolutely amazing.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, the support from women's absolutely missing. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Why specifically the cause which is to help imperior poverty. I mean it seems an obvious one, but yeah.
00:06:16
Speaker 3: So we've previously done similar events like this where we put on events, either just female only cards or just general charity events for a cause. Previously we worked with rape Crisis. This decision for this one was because there is such a problem in our South African community around girls and teenage girls missing school and staying out of sport for beauty between one week and ten days of the month because they don't have access to sanitary where and so Menstruation Foundation is just doing incredible work and trying to fix that by getting sanitary we're into schools allowing girls to come to school to play sport. So it's a worthy cause. And basically what we're doing is we're getting twenty six daighties, so thirteen fights on the card. They were going to bleed so that other girls can lead with dignity.
00:07:02
Speaker 5: Okay, I like it. Let's talk about the bleeding that you're going to be doing.
00:07:06
Speaker 1: How I'd love to So I kind of I started embarking on a bit of a health journey about a year and a half ago and lost an awful lot of way, and I'm still kind of getting in shape and I love going to the gym. But I've often thought, like, if it came down to it, what would I be able to get in the ring? I don't know if I could take a punch to the face. I really don't and and I'd want to do it, and I appreciate the discipline and I appreciate the skill.
00:07:36
Speaker 4: Can't hit in the face, though, Have you tried sporing just just before actually just going and getting in the ring?
00:07:43
Speaker 2: Training in the gym?
00:07:44
Speaker 4: Getting in the face very gently?
00:07:45
Speaker 5: Very likely?
00:07:46
Speaker 4: And then so yeah, that goes.
00:07:48
Speaker 5: Is that is that the way into it start with.
00:07:50
Speaker 4: Somebody's boring and then get some face hads in every now and then custom yourself to it.
00:07:55
Speaker 5: So that's the thing.
00:07:55
Speaker 3: Where is that you know there's there's different ways that you can train in a combat sport. Yeah, one is that you can just be fit and you can just learn a skill. So that if you ever are in a situation where you need to defend yourself, you have those abilities to do that, right. And that's usually where women start when they come into a gym, as they start by just wanting to get fit, just wanting to learn some self defense skills, and then often the competitive ones want to go right now, what's you know, what's next? Yeah, so we start in a female friendly environment, worth training, and then possibly adding some contact, whether that's just drilling, maybe somebody sparring like Michigan mentioned. And then if you do get into a sparring situation in the gym, which was mine. My situation was what almost ten years ago. It was the first time I spiled with Annie, really, and my intention was never to fight. And you know, you think that you're made of glass, and then you get hit in the face and you're like, whoa, I'm actually fine, I didn't fall apart and a little bruise heels, and then that then builds into a competitive nature of okay, what next? Now Now I want to compete.
00:08:51
Speaker 5: Now I want to fight.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the beautiful thing is that there's different levels to that, so you can fight in a white collar event like Annie was speaking, about where there's no real winner at the end, and a lot of the corporates do it. So your financial companies often do these corporate white collar fights where it doesn't count for anything. Or maybe you want to get onto the amateur circuit and you know, have an amateur fight and then the bug bites and next thing you know, you've had five professional fights and that's your life.
00:09:15
Speaker 5: What is that? What is the fight scene look like?
00:09:18
Speaker 1: The women's fights scene look like in the Western Cape in South Africa at the moment, like how who's attending the events?
00:09:24
Speaker 3: So from a Western Cap perspective, it's still very small, both on an amateur scene and on a professional scene. I think from a professional fighter scene, I think there's maybe like five female professionals in Cape Town, five or six across different disciplines, so a couple of boxing ladies. I think Michigan myself, we are the only three professional MMA fighters here. There's maybe three professional Multai fighters, So it's it's very small. And then nationally, you know, you can add maybe another four or five ladies in each province. So it's small, but it's growing, and I think the thing that helps it grow is a very like this and gyms that are female forward, that are excited about training women and getting them into fights. And not every gym is there yet, but they're catching up.
00:10:08
Speaker 5: I agree, not every gym is there yet. I still listen.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: I'm at a very run of the mill kind of not say running the milk because I'm not be listening to get in trouble. But you know, I'm a chain and there is still a perception of women in the weight section. I was at the gym the other day. I'm just gonna have a bit of a bitch and this doesn't happen to men. So We've got five weight benches and I'm like, I've gone up to the twelves. Now we're chest pressing with the twelves. I'm trying, and this young guy came and I was the only woman in what five or six and he stands by me.
00:10:44
Speaker 5: He's waiting for me. He's not going to stand by the by the guy's there, he's waiting for me. How many sets you got left?
00:10:51
Speaker 1: So but do you know, I just pretend like I just fixed my headphones and straightforward pretend that you don't exist to me, sir, I'm sorry, go and bother somebody it is irrelevant how many so I've got because I'm on the bench now, or it annoys me. But there is still this this this perception of women don't left, women aren't training hard. We must be over there on the cross on the cross trainer doing a one.
00:11:10
Speaker 3: Hundred percent percent. And you know, Miskid myself both work with training with training women in a gym environment. And then you know, any tram so myself myself a misgir owner gym called Pride Fighting Academy, and he's a long time standing students at PFA for like the last ten years. And she's competitive in the hierarch space. So who knows the weight section very very well. And I think all of us have a very common experience with that is that women are feeling they do feel intimidated walking into a fight academy, walking into the weight section at a you know, commercial gym, and it often just takes one woman to kind of take you there, I agree, and to remind you that you do belong, and then it shifts the game.
00:11:47
Speaker 5: For you, you know.
00:11:47
Speaker 1: I love it's sometimes when you walk in and you kind of do the nod to another woman, You're like, yeah, well yeah, yeah.
00:11:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, the best feeling ever.
00:11:55
Speaker 1: It's so good in terms of youngsters getting into this, how do you I mean because I'm going to talk about my little girl when she's only six, But I love the idea from a safety point of view, but just from a confidence point of view. There's something about knowing that your body's capabilities and the strength, Like, what do you feel about youngsters getting it? I mean, obviously you got in quite young as well, so for you.
00:12:19
Speaker 2: So I actually coach our kids grow.
00:12:23
Speaker 4: Excuse me, I coach on kids program, and our kids program starts at six and it goes up to about twelve in the class, and then after that we kind of put them into the bigger classes. And when they come in, they don't understand their bodies at all, right, so they come in or floppy and moving, and they're like fish out of water falling around. And like within three to four months, you start seeing them understand how they should move, and you start seeing you start seeing the kids grow and start understanding like the terminology that we use or just the general movements, and then they start getting wise to other movements. And when they start growing like that, I think it builds their confidence more agree. So when you go like you got that, and they go like, yoky, that's it now, No got that, So then they get the next thing and the next thing, and that's what I think. That's the best thing for kids.
00:13:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree, I agree.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: Just remind us when the event is happening. The Ultimate Dirty Boxing Female Edition Fight Night is on the.
00:13:19
Speaker 4: Twenty first of August.
00:13:21
Speaker 1: Okay, twenty first of August, and it's happening at the HCC, isn't it.
00:13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:13:26
Speaker 1: Correct, Yes, in in District sixth formerly the Fear God six to eleven pm.
00:13:31
Speaker 5: How do we get tickets?
00:13:33
Speaker 3: So tickets are available on cricket so you can purchase your ticket there. There are four hundred rand yep. And it's a very small venue as you as you know, so we limited to the amount of people that we can seet in the space. And tickets are selling very fast because it is a very different event to any other fights event that you've been to, not just because it's only got females on the card, but because it's in a theater. So normally these events are kind of set in a crummy dingy gym or like some city hall somewhere, and they don't have a very boogie feel about it. But yeah, we've put it intentionally inside a theater space so that it really levels up from a classy experience. So hoping to put on something very uniquely different. The other thing that is uniquely different is that it's going to be an all female team. So from your commentators to your ring announcer, promoter is female. It's the officials are going to be all females. So we really are looking to highlight female talents across all spaces in the combat sports industry.
00:14:28
Speaker 5: Amazing. I absolutely love that.
00:14:30
Speaker 1: And then in terms of social media, how do we follow you and all of that jazz?
00:14:33
Speaker 3: So Ultimate Dirty Boxing is the Instagram page. Otherwise everything else is on cricket.
00:14:38
Speaker 5: Okay, how long are you guys training, by the way, in the.
00:14:40
Speaker 6: Gym have been at PFA for ten years now that I've been training martial arts, I don't know.
00:14:47
Speaker 5: And what does your training look like like on a in fight camp?
00:14:51
Speaker 6: Just generally so fight camp, I think we're putting in two to three hours a day, six days a week, with the.
00:14:56
Speaker 2: Day of recovery in between.
00:14:59
Speaker 6: I just wanted is there something I know you spoke about kids starting when they're young.
00:15:04
Speaker 2: These definitely something.
00:15:05
Speaker 5: He's so I saw fighting. I saw him fighting.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. That doesn't translate well on radio, doesn't remind remind me his name.
00:15:17
Speaker 3: He's the Lice Current likeway EFC Champ and also a coach of Pride Fighting Academy, one of your fele We also didn't know that he was coming today and I.
00:15:26
Speaker 1: Only saw he's in with Stan Marles on KFM and I saw standposted something last night, so I said, I saw him fighting the other day.
00:15:32
Speaker 5: He was very good. He was very very good. You always joy he was. Yeah, it was hectic.
00:15:38
Speaker 6: Sorry, no, no, no, that's fine, it's fine. There's something about starting young. But this was something about it's never it's never too late to start.
00:15:46
Speaker 2: I think our.
00:15:48
Speaker 6: First professional fights were when I had was.
00:15:53
Speaker 2: I'm forty four.
00:15:54
Speaker 6: Okay, there's still it's never too late.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: So it's never niver young or you never talk.
00:16:00
Speaker 5: I love that.
00:16:01
Speaker 1: All right, there we go, folks, get your tickets from Ticket for the event on the twenty first of August. Ultimate Dirty Boxing Female Edition. It's happening at the Homecoming Center. Go and see these incredible women doing some incredible things in the ring, but also out of as well. They're bleeding in the ring so young girls can have dignity in their menstruation period.
Speaker 1: Right, it's a fight night with a difference, ultimate dirty boxing that sounds rude, almost female. Addition, we'll see South Africa's top female fighters stepping into the ring while raising money. Yes please to help end period poverty and joining us are two of the nights fighters, right, Mishka.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Hi, Hello, darling, how are you? I'm pretty good.
00:00:22
Speaker 1: I'm fabulous, Anisha. Yes, Hello, Hello, Hello, which means that you must be jes Hello, Jess, Hello, and thank you so much for coming in. Okay, so why have I got Who's Megan? Why have I got Meghan on the sheet?
00:00:38
Speaker 3: No?
00:00:39
Speaker 4: Mean didn't end up making it today, so she's taking a bit of a race day.
00:00:43
Speaker 5: Okay, you relax, Meghan, you relax.
00:00:45
Speaker 1: So somebody's going to be fighting Meghan though, that would be me, Mishka, that would be right. First of all, let's get into I am I'm so into women fighting great.
00:00:56
Speaker 5: I'm so so.
00:00:58
Speaker 1: I recently kind of when I say, got into MMA, but I didn't get into it. But but a person enjoys some MMA, so I kind of, by by default I got into it. But actually I like watching the women fighting because we seem to be I don't know.
00:01:12
Speaker 2: More tougher and more aggressive.
00:01:14
Speaker 1: All of that all stuff. Can you, darling, are you able to put your chair up at all? Because I'm literally just thinking. This is like when I phone my mum on on like on FaceTime, and all I can see is the top of her eyebrows. If we get ah, there we go, There we go, Andy, can you do the same, thanks darling.
00:01:31
Speaker 5: How did you get into fighting Michigan?
00:01:34
Speaker 2: Well?
00:01:34
Speaker 4: I started when I was quite young.
00:01:36
Speaker 1: Okay, how Young's young? Do I need to get my big girl into the ring?
00:01:40
Speaker 5: There?
00:01:42
Speaker 4: So I started when I was nine. My mom took me into a kickboxing class and then I just kind of never looked back.
00:01:49
Speaker 5: Wow, yeah, okay, okay.
00:01:52
Speaker 1: And then in terms of but your you're boxing fighting this this is what we're doing?
00:01:55
Speaker 5: No, what are we are we doing?
00:01:56
Speaker 4: Dirty boxing?
00:01:57
Speaker 5: What is that?
00:01:59
Speaker 4: Some boxing with some elbows and some clinchers, with not the standard puffy gloves but a little bit smaller and our fingers are open. So just taking boxing and adding violence.
00:02:15
Speaker 3: So essentially why we went for dirty boxing is that for this event, the idea was to put only females on the card for Warman's Month Rise, and because the pool of female fighters in the western capes quite limited. The idea was to try to merge a couple of fighting styles. So dirty boxing is something that exists in the States already and we were the first to bring it to South Africa.
00:02:37
Speaker 5: And so it allows.
00:02:39
Speaker 3: Women who are trained in Muay Thai, women who are trained in MMA, and women who are trained in boxing to kind of merge in a fighting style that suits everyone. So you can hit in the clinch whereas boxing is no clinch work striking, you can throw elbows, and you're wearing MMA gloves, so it's it's a kind of hybrid style of fighting.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: How do you and someone who's able to move in all those three disciplines though, because if you've got a boxer who's got no MMA fight training, if someone's suddenly throwing an elbow, that.
00:03:10
Speaker 5: Is one percent a stupid question.
00:03:13
Speaker 3: So as a result, there are thirteen fights on the card. Eleven of those are traditional boxing fights and the last two fights which is Any and Mishka, and they're fighting two other ladies from a gym called Tai Holics, so that gym is a muy Thai traditional gym, and so their opponents, Megan and Vernet, are kind of traditional muy Thai fighters, and Annie has a base in muay Thai and MM Mishka's base is kickboxing and MMA, so everyone's kind of merging their styles and meeting in the middle where everyone has an advantage and a disadvantage.
00:03:45
Speaker 1: Okay, Annie, how did you get to be doing what you're doing?
00:03:50
Speaker 6: I've been journy Muitai for quite a long time. I did a few white collar boxing events and then call it the isn't actually a winner after a fight, So I was like, you know, what, if I'm putting all this work in, I'd like to, you know, have my hand. It's it's it's more like, what's what I'm looking for? Like a display, you know?
00:04:12
Speaker 5: Okay?
00:04:14
Speaker 6: And then yeah, joined PFA, did my first Muitai fight with PFA, and yeah, just.
00:04:20
Speaker 2: Been from there, did some MMA, did some boxing.
00:04:22
Speaker 5: So what do you love about it? Wow?
00:04:29
Speaker 2: The discipline, the discipline, the family.
00:04:32
Speaker 6: There's something about putting months into a camp and like stepping into the ring and being able to show all the work that.
00:04:38
Speaker 2: You've done, you know on the night.
00:04:40
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and.
00:04:42
Speaker 2: Just being able to chain with these these amazing women.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: It's so I I never understood I never understood the kind of the UFC stuff. I never I never got it. And then I went to go and see, uh, the the not UFC.
00:04:58
Speaker 5: What do we have here?
00:04:59
Speaker 1: F fight at Graham West in February and we had really good seats and we were sitting right there and I was I was sitting either side of two big fans, and I was like, how am I?
00:05:10
Speaker 5: This was amazing? It was? It was electric. It's you know?
00:05:15
Speaker 1: What was it the other day that I was up at three o'clock in the morning watching a fight? Remember I came in and I was like, yeah, we were up at stupid o'clock, not Drekers. What's his name? Connor McGregor, which was over you watch, yes or one point one?
00:05:31
Speaker 5: What was it?
00:05:32
Speaker 1: One minute and thirty seconds of it? Somebody was very upset about that. It is electric, though, isn't it that there's something about it? And as you say, the discipline from a from a women's point of view, what reaction do you get from people when they tell you that you fight? Because I think that I think people can't get their brains around women fighting.
00:05:51
Speaker 2: You get the typical with minutes do you underspire with me?
00:05:57
Speaker 6: Oh, you're you're so small, you're so cute, Why do you want to fight? Yeah, you know, but with women, it's the support from women is absolutely amazing.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, the support from women's absolutely missing. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Why specifically the cause which is to help imperior poverty. I mean it seems an obvious one, but yeah.
00:06:16
Speaker 3: So we've previously done similar events like this where we put on events, either just female only cards or just general charity events for a cause. Previously we worked with rape Crisis. This decision for this one was because there is such a problem in our South African community around girls and teenage girls missing school and staying out of sport for beauty between one week and ten days of the month because they don't have access to sanitary where and so Menstruation Foundation is just doing incredible work and trying to fix that by getting sanitary we're into schools allowing girls to come to school to play sport. So it's a worthy cause. And basically what we're doing is we're getting twenty six daighties, so thirteen fights on the card. They were going to bleed so that other girls can lead with dignity.
00:07:02
Speaker 5: Okay, I like it. Let's talk about the bleeding that you're going to be doing.
00:07:06
Speaker 1: How I'd love to So I kind of I started embarking on a bit of a health journey about a year and a half ago and lost an awful lot of way, and I'm still kind of getting in shape and I love going to the gym. But I've often thought, like, if it came down to it, what would I be able to get in the ring? I don't know if I could take a punch to the face. I really don't and and I'd want to do it, and I appreciate the discipline and I appreciate the skill.
00:07:36
Speaker 4: Can't hit in the face, though, Have you tried sporing just just before actually just going and getting in the ring?
00:07:43
Speaker 2: Training in the gym?
00:07:44
Speaker 4: Getting in the face very gently?
00:07:45
Speaker 5: Very likely?
00:07:46
Speaker 4: And then so yeah, that goes.
00:07:48
Speaker 5: Is that is that the way into it start with.
00:07:50
Speaker 4: Somebody's boring and then get some face hads in every now and then custom yourself to it.
00:07:55
Speaker 5: So that's the thing.
00:07:55
Speaker 3: Where is that you know there's there's different ways that you can train in a combat sport. Yeah, one is that you can just be fit and you can just learn a skill. So that if you ever are in a situation where you need to defend yourself, you have those abilities to do that, right. And that's usually where women start when they come into a gym, as they start by just wanting to get fit, just wanting to learn some self defense skills, and then often the competitive ones want to go right now, what's you know, what's next? Yeah, so we start in a female friendly environment, worth training, and then possibly adding some contact, whether that's just drilling, maybe somebody sparring like Michigan mentioned. And then if you do get into a sparring situation in the gym, which was mine. My situation was what almost ten years ago. It was the first time I spiled with Annie, really, and my intention was never to fight. And you know, you think that you're made of glass, and then you get hit in the face and you're like, whoa, I'm actually fine, I didn't fall apart and a little bruise heels, and then that then builds into a competitive nature of okay, what next? Now Now I want to compete.
00:08:51
Speaker 5: Now I want to fight.
00:08:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the beautiful thing is that there's different levels to that, so you can fight in a white collar event like Annie was speaking, about where there's no real winner at the end, and a lot of the corporates do it. So your financial companies often do these corporate white collar fights where it doesn't count for anything. Or maybe you want to get onto the amateur circuit and you know, have an amateur fight and then the bug bites and next thing you know, you've had five professional fights and that's your life.
00:09:15
Speaker 5: What is that? What is the fight scene look like?
00:09:18
Speaker 1: The women's fights scene look like in the Western Cape in South Africa at the moment, like how who's attending the events?
00:09:24
Speaker 3: So from a Western Cap perspective, it's still very small, both on an amateur scene and on a professional scene. I think from a professional fighter scene, I think there's maybe like five female professionals in Cape Town, five or six across different disciplines, so a couple of boxing ladies. I think Michigan myself, we are the only three professional MMA fighters here. There's maybe three professional Multai fighters, So it's it's very small. And then nationally, you know, you can add maybe another four or five ladies in each province. So it's small, but it's growing, and I think the thing that helps it grow is a very like this and gyms that are female forward, that are excited about training women and getting them into fights. And not every gym is there yet, but they're catching up.
00:10:08
Speaker 5: I agree, not every gym is there yet. I still listen.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: I'm at a very run of the mill kind of not say running the milk because I'm not be listening to get in trouble. But you know, I'm a chain and there is still a perception of women in the weight section. I was at the gym the other day. I'm just gonna have a bit of a bitch and this doesn't happen to men. So We've got five weight benches and I'm like, I've gone up to the twelves. Now we're chest pressing with the twelves. I'm trying, and this young guy came and I was the only woman in what five or six and he stands by me.
00:10:44
Speaker 5: He's waiting for me. He's not going to stand by the by the guy's there, he's waiting for me. How many sets you got left?
00:10:51
Speaker 1: So but do you know, I just pretend like I just fixed my headphones and straightforward pretend that you don't exist to me, sir, I'm sorry, go and bother somebody it is irrelevant how many so I've got because I'm on the bench now, or it annoys me. But there is still this this this perception of women don't left, women aren't training hard. We must be over there on the cross on the cross trainer doing a one.
00:11:10
Speaker 3: Hundred percent percent. And you know, Miskid myself both work with training with training women in a gym environment. And then you know, any tram so myself myself a misgir owner gym called Pride Fighting Academy, and he's a long time standing students at PFA for like the last ten years. And she's competitive in the hierarch space. So who knows the weight section very very well. And I think all of us have a very common experience with that is that women are feeling they do feel intimidated walking into a fight academy, walking into the weight section at a you know, commercial gym, and it often just takes one woman to kind of take you there, I agree, and to remind you that you do belong, and then it shifts the game.
00:11:47
Speaker 5: For you, you know.
00:11:47
Speaker 1: I love it's sometimes when you walk in and you kind of do the nod to another woman, You're like, yeah, well yeah, yeah.
00:11:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, the best feeling ever.
00:11:55
Speaker 1: It's so good in terms of youngsters getting into this, how do you I mean because I'm going to talk about my little girl when she's only six, But I love the idea from a safety point of view, but just from a confidence point of view. There's something about knowing that your body's capabilities and the strength, Like, what do you feel about youngsters getting it? I mean, obviously you got in quite young as well, so for you.
00:12:19
Speaker 2: So I actually coach our kids grow.
00:12:23
Speaker 4: Excuse me, I coach on kids program, and our kids program starts at six and it goes up to about twelve in the class, and then after that we kind of put them into the bigger classes. And when they come in, they don't understand their bodies at all, right, so they come in or floppy and moving, and they're like fish out of water falling around. And like within three to four months, you start seeing them understand how they should move, and you start seeing you start seeing the kids grow and start understanding like the terminology that we use or just the general movements, and then they start getting wise to other movements. And when they start growing like that, I think it builds their confidence more agree. So when you go like you got that, and they go like, yoky, that's it now, No got that, So then they get the next thing and the next thing, and that's what I think. That's the best thing for kids.
00:13:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree, I agree.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: Just remind us when the event is happening. The Ultimate Dirty Boxing Female Edition Fight Night is on the.
00:13:19
Speaker 4: Twenty first of August.
00:13:21
Speaker 1: Okay, twenty first of August, and it's happening at the HCC, isn't it.
00:13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:13:26
Speaker 1: Correct, Yes, in in District sixth formerly the Fear God six to eleven pm.
00:13:31
Speaker 5: How do we get tickets?
00:13:33
Speaker 3: So tickets are available on cricket so you can purchase your ticket there. There are four hundred rand yep. And it's a very small venue as you as you know, so we limited to the amount of people that we can seet in the space. And tickets are selling very fast because it is a very different event to any other fights event that you've been to, not just because it's only got females on the card, but because it's in a theater. So normally these events are kind of set in a crummy dingy gym or like some city hall somewhere, and they don't have a very boogie feel about it. But yeah, we've put it intentionally inside a theater space so that it really levels up from a classy experience. So hoping to put on something very uniquely different. The other thing that is uniquely different is that it's going to be an all female team. So from your commentators to your ring announcer, promoter is female. It's the officials are going to be all females. So we really are looking to highlight female talents across all spaces in the combat sports industry.
00:14:28
Speaker 5: Amazing. I absolutely love that.
00:14:30
Speaker 1: And then in terms of social media, how do we follow you and all of that jazz?
00:14:33
Speaker 3: So Ultimate Dirty Boxing is the Instagram page. Otherwise everything else is on cricket.
00:14:38
Speaker 5: Okay, how long are you guys training, by the way, in the.
00:14:40
Speaker 6: Gym have been at PFA for ten years now that I've been training martial arts, I don't know.
00:14:47
Speaker 5: And what does your training look like like on a in fight camp?
00:14:51
Speaker 6: Just generally so fight camp, I think we're putting in two to three hours a day, six days a week, with the.
00:14:56
Speaker 2: Day of recovery in between.
00:14:59
Speaker 6: I just wanted is there something I know you spoke about kids starting when they're young.
00:15:04
Speaker 2: These definitely something.
00:15:05
Speaker 5: He's so I saw fighting. I saw him fighting.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. That doesn't translate well on radio, doesn't remind remind me his name.
00:15:17
Speaker 3: He's the Lice Current likeway EFC Champ and also a coach of Pride Fighting Academy, one of your fele We also didn't know that he was coming today and I.
00:15:26
Speaker 1: Only saw he's in with Stan Marles on KFM and I saw standposted something last night, so I said, I saw him fighting the other day.
00:15:32
Speaker 5: He was very good. He was very very good. You always joy he was. Yeah, it was hectic.
00:15:38
Speaker 6: Sorry, no, no, no, that's fine, it's fine. There's something about starting young. But this was something about it's never it's never too late to start.
00:15:46
Speaker 2: I think our.
00:15:48
Speaker 6: First professional fights were when I had was.
00:15:53
Speaker 2: I'm forty four.
00:15:54
Speaker 6: Okay, there's still it's never too late.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: So it's never niver young or you never talk.
00:16:00
Speaker 5: I love that.
00:16:01
Speaker 1: All right, there we go, folks, get your tickets from Ticket for the event on the twenty first of August. Ultimate Dirty Boxing Female Edition. It's happening at the Homecoming Center. Go and see these incredible women doing some incredible things in the ring, but also out of as well. They're bleeding in the ring so young girls can have dignity in their menstruation period.
