Skip to main contentA large cage stands on the floor where crowds at the Roseland Theater typically dance. On this December night, it's surrounded by chairs.
Suddenly, the music changes and Eminem's pulsating, testosterone-filled "Lose Yourself" gives way to an old Diana Ross hit.
I'm coming out.
I want the world to know.
I got to let it show.
In the front row, a spectator spits chew into an empty VitaminWater bottle. He's just one of the nearly 1,200 men and women who have paid upward of $29 apiece to see Rumble at the Roseland 40.
Jody De Simone, 32, approaches the cage—an elevated octagon enclosed by a chain-link fence. She is 5 foot 1 with short, dark brown, spiky hair. A dragon tattoo stretches across her back and runs under her right arm. After a day of fasting, she weighs 124 pounds.
As the crowd hollers and cheers, De Simone's "corner"—her coach and an assistant who carries an aquamarine shower caddy from the Dollar Store—follows her into the ring. The Vaseline on her brow glistens.
De Simone is about to have the first amateur fight of her life. She's not in it for money; there are no prizes at the amateur level.
It wouldn't matter anyway, because it looks like she's about to be crushed.
Her opponent is Christa Shaffer. Six feet tall and lanky, Shaffer is almost a foot taller than De Simone. Trained as a kickboxer, Shaffer looks as though she could topple De Simone with one quick wallop.
Her reputation precedes her. Last year, Shaffer and her husband, Jay, managed a Vancouver gym owned by the legendary Randy Couture, the most popular fighter in mixed martial arts history, who once called Oregon home. Now they run their own.
The roar of the crowd returns as Shaffer bounds into the ring behind De Simone, slapping gloves with her opponent before heading to her own corner, where she shifts her weight from leg to leg and pumps her fists as if madly jumping rope.
Her long brown hair is pulled into multiple French braids that spiral across her skull, revealing neat rows of white scalp. "It made her look really tough," De Simone later said.
Besides, De Simone says, "I was terrified to get in the ring."
She continued, "I don't like hitting people."
De Simone's journey to the Roseland began in Anacortes, Wash., a small seaport two hours north of Seattle.
Her first competition was more haute couture than Randy Couture.
At the age of 4, De Simone rose in the ranks of the pageant world to win the title of Miss Baby America. "It wasn't anything like JonBenet," De Simone's mother, Deborah Jones, insists. There was no makeup involved. But the honor did earn De Simone $2,000, a miniature fur coat, trips to Europe and Mexico, and a kiss from Barry Williams, the actor who played Greg Brady in The Brady Bunch. "Jody weighs 28 pounds and stands 3 feet tall in her best patent leather slippers," a report from her hometown newspaper announced in 1980.
"That was the beginning," De Simone says.
De Simone soon abandoned her patent leather slippers and tiara. Her father, an automobile mechanic, took her to her first tae kwon do class when she was in elementary school. She played war with her two older brothers in their dad's backyard and wore her first ninja costume at age 8. By 13, she was competing in martial arts competitions, once winning second place in a nunchucks-throwing contest.
At 18, a friend told De Simone she was moving to Portland. "She came to say goodbye," De Simone recalls. "I said, 'Hold on' and went and grabbed my bag." De Simone's mother and stepfather were out of town at the time, but De Simone decided on the spot to go, too. Her first stop was Clackamas Community College.
"That daughter of mine," De Simone's mom says. "Anytime she's ever wanted anything, she goes for it, and she gets it."
Today, De Simone has a bachelor's degree in advertising and is an assistant account manager at Coates Kokes, a Portland public-relations firm specializing in green and sustainable products, as well as everything from microbrews to doughnuts. "By day, she's pitching beer," says Kate Kauffman, a co-worker. "By night, she's fighting in a ring."
De Simone lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the Pearl, next to the Streetcar line. A couch belonging to her 4-year-old boxer, Zoe, sits alongside one of the apartment's beige walls. A child-size chair from IKEA serves as De Simone's video-game seat. She doesn't like violent games, she admits: "A lot of them are so gruesome, it's scary that kids can sit there and play them."
Two months ago, De Simone walked into a mixed martial arts fitness center in Southeast Portland. Designed exclusively for women, it's called (rather appropriately) Grappling in Real Life Situations, or G.I.R.L.S. Gym.
That was Oct. 29. De Simone says she was just looking for a good workout.
Six weeks later, she would be climbing into the ring at the Roseland for her first amateur bout.
Olympic wrestler Matt Lindland, a prominent promoter and fighter in Oregon (and unsuccessful Republican candidate for the state Legislature in 2008), says women should be allowed to fight. But he dismisses the idea of their ever reaching the heights of male fighters.
"Women were not designed for combat," Lindland says bluntly.
De Simone puts it differently. "Women weren't raised to fight," she says. "We're still pushing out of that box we've been in."
That contradiction lies at the heart of the sport's growing female franchise. Mixed martial arts isn't just ultimate fighting. For women, it's the ultimate test of nature vs. nurture.
To spectators more accustomed to watching men fight, female combat is still a novelty. At times, it's a sexual thrill.
For De Simone, the appeal is more ordinary; it would be familiar to any male mixed martial artist. "It's such a challenge," De Simone says. "There's no one to blame if you don't do it but yourself. It's all up to you."
By "do it," De Simone means win.
"Even just the thought of fighting like that, because it's so raw and probably dangerous, it really brought something to life in me that was not only fear-driven but...addictive," she adds.
De Simone's career is only beginning, and her nickname, "Crash Course," reflects that.
In fact, De Simone started training to fight just 11 days before her Dec. 6 bout, after Shaffer's scheduled opponent unexpectedly backed out. An experienced runner and cyclist, De Simone threw herself into training for three hours a day with her coach, Sarah Oriza, a professional fighter, and Oriza's husband, Gary.
"I'm really competitive in general," De Simone says. "When I do something, I do it 110 percent. I'm either overly interested or not at all."
Much of that training is unremarkable in the sense that all fighters go through it—male or female. De Simone practiced submission holds (see glossary, below) and learned the techniques for throwing opponents to the ground. Since she doesn't drink and already eats a healthy diet, her eating habits stayed the same: fish, rice and vegetables. But one thing was different for De Simone, like all female fighters.
De Simone had to take a pregnancy test within 14 days of the fight, and it had to be negative.
De Simone's sport traces its genealogy to the first Greek Olympics, where fighters competed in the similar sport of "pankration." The term "mixed martial arts" gained currency in the 1990s only after a modern version of the sport drew crowds in Denver and Atlantic City, N.J.
The idea was to put two skilled men from different fighting backgrounds in a cage. Fighters trained in tae kwon do were pitted against kickboxers. Judo masters went into the ring with boxers. Wrestlers fought jujitsu buffs. "It had a video-game mentality to it," says Brad Darcy, executive director of the Oregon State Athletic Commission. "And there was genuine interest in the question, 'Which of these fighting styles would prevail?'"
Now, instead of having fighters from different disciplines fight each other, fighters who are trained in multiple martial arts battle others with the same broad range of skills. In a sense, the fighters themselves became mixed.
Across the country, many lawmakers—including U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who once called the sport "human cockfighting"—considered mixed martial arts dangerous. In the late 1990s, some tried to outlaw the sport. A number of states, including New York, Massachusetts and Wisconsin, prohibit it. Under pressure from McCain and other legislators, pay-per-view television carriers refused for several years to air the fights. But its popularity only grew.
"Its first forms were pretty extreme, and extreme is, of course, a relative term," Darcy says.
Some moves, like eye-gouging, weren't allowed even in those early days. Fish-hooking, where you reach into a fighter's mouth and try to pull his cheek off, was also shunned. But there were few other rules. "There were no weight classes," Darcy says. "You could strike to the groin. There were no time limits to the rounds."
In part to appease lawmakers, promoters adopted new rules, imposing weight classes and time limits, and requiring fighters to wear gloves to protect their hands. To date, one mixed martial arts fighter—Sam Vasquez of Houston—has died as a result of injuries sustained in a sanctioned bout.
No longer considered an underground sport, mixed martial arts has gone mainstream. Sports Illustrated called 2008 a breakout year for the sport: "More people than ever enjoyed a seemingly endless stream of classic MMA fights and action on what felt like a televised loop," Josh Gross of SI.com wrote Dec. 22. Amazon.com lists nearly 500 mixed martial arts DVDs and the same number of books.
A variety of leagues have sprung up to promote events. Las Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship is the NFL of mixed martial arts. Today, its professional fighters, all of whom are male, earn annual salaries in the six figures. (The most famous and accomplished female fighter in the sport, Gina Carano, earns about $25,000 a fight in a different league. However, there are so few female fighters, she can only make a couple appearances a year.) The UFC's bouts air on Spike and Versus, drawing huge numbers of male viewers between the ages of 18 and 35. And starting in 2009, for the first time, the UFC's World Extreme Cagefighting may put women in its world-famous "Octagon," the UFC's trademark ring.
Twelve years ago, in the wake of McCain's national campaign to prohibit mixed martial arts, Oregon lawmakers tried to ban the sport outright.
In 1997, House Bill 2660, sponsored by then-Rep. Ryan Deckert (D-Beaverton), outlawed "extreme fighting." The bill passed 53 to 3 in the House and 22 to 1 in the Senate.
For years, nothing happened. Then, in January 2002, the Full Contact Fighting Federation, the outfit that puts on Rumble at the Roseland, scheduled its first competition.
The state responded, just days before the event, by issuing a temporary injunction to stop it.
But promoters in Oregon weren't willing to back down. They fought the state for the right to host mixed martial arts events on two fronts, in the courts and in the Legislature.
In 2002, before a Marion County Circuit Court judge, the Full Contact Fighting Federation argued that mixed martial arts should not be considered "extreme fighting" since mixed martial arts did, in fact, have rules. The court agreed.
About the same time, mixed martial arts advocates formed the Fairness in Sports and Training Committee, or Fist PAC, and lobbied the Legislature.
Eventually, state officials reversed course, agreeing to allow mixed martial arts competitions while taking steps to regulate the sport—and to generate money to pay for its oversight. The state now takes 6 percent of ticket sales and charges fees to license fighters and promoters. In 2007, the state created a medical advisory board for the Oregon State Athletic Commission (which regulates both pro and amateur bouts) and, for the first time, required blood tests and physical exams for amateurs.
"The cage fighting was of extreme concern to me," says state Sen. Vicki Walker (D-Eugene). "It's rather distasteful in my view. But that doesn't mean other people should not enjoy it. …I don't think we should ban that type of activity. I just want it to be safe."
Brawling Beth Gets a Crash Course (video by Dan Green):
Jody De Simone Debuts in the Rumble at the Roseland (video courtesy of the Full Contact Fighting Federation and Pro Video Productions):
De Simone and Shaffer approach the center of the ring and bump fists. The top of De Simone's head barely reaches Shaffer's shoulders. The referee towers above her, too.
The music stops.
"Well, I am excited," an announcer intones. "It's simply supply and demand. Everyone wants to see a girl fight, and there's not a whole lot of them."
He's right. About 70 professional fighters and 300 amateur fighters compete in Oregon. Of those, 14 are women. The night that De Simone fought Shaffer at the Roseland, theirs was the only match between women.
The ref sends them both to their corners. Then he drops his hands. The fight begins.
For 10 seconds, nothing happens. The two fighters move across the ring. Shaffer jabs at De Simone. She jabs again. "An obvious reach advantage," the announcer notes.
Then, with the quickness of a bobcat, De Simone lunges.
Her head crashes into Shaffer's abdomen. She plows into Shaffer, lifting her so that Shaffer is momentarily on the tips of her toes. De Simone tightens her grip around Shaffer, arms clasped behind Shaffer's back. Then the two women fall to the ground.
"Ooooh, Jody wants to go to the mat," the announcer shouts.
"I agree with that strategy," the other announcer declares.
De Simone knocks Shaffer to the ground, jumps on top of her and starts punching Shaffer in the cheek, the jaw, the eye. Shaffer bends her knees and throws her hips forward, trying to knock De Simone off balance. It doesn't work.
De Simone continues her facial assault. It's called the "ground and pound." Spectators can actually see Shaffer's face swell up. They're screaming. Shaffer twists, and De Simone falls on her side. She reaches an arm around Shaffer's throat and pulls back on Shaffer's body, stretching her torso. She hooks her legs into Shaffer's, preventing Shaffer from fighting back. De Simone then uses her other arm to pull back on the arm that's against Shaffer's throat. It has all the elegance and brutishness of a street fight.
Shaffer refuses to surrender. But the referee, sensing Shaffer is losing blood to her brain, intercedes. He raises one of Shaffer's arms and it drops lifelessly to the ground. The match is over.
The whole fight has taken 40 seconds.
Shaffer lies on the ground unconscious and De Simone jumps up, arms waving, She runs around the cage. Her coach later says she had tears in her eyes.
"Once I was in there," De Simone says, "it was either me or her."
De Simone is already eager to get back in the cage.
She wants to fight professionally one day. And last month she auditioned to be one of the 16 female fighters who will compete on a mixed martial arts reality television show that is supposed to air on network TV.
She's as serious as any man in the sport. But the signs of that are uniquely female.
Last month, De Simone charted out her menstrual cycle on a calendar. She crossed out the weeks when thinks she'll have her period and decided to avoid scheduling any amateur fights during those weeks. Those are the times she's more likely to retain water, threatening her chances of making weight at the 125-pound class.
"I got in that ring," De Simone says, "and by the time I got out of there I thought, 'My gosh, that was the most amazing feeling ever.'"
Glossary of Terms
The goal of every mixed martial arts fight is to end it as soon as possible. And one of the quickest ways to do that is for a fighter to get her opponent into a submission pose, forcing her to tap out, which is more or less the same thing as screaming, "Uncle!"
There are two kinds of submission poses. One involves choking the opponent, sometimes causing her to lose oxygen to the brain and pass out. The other involves bending joints and limbs in the opposite direction from what nature intended, threatening to break bones and tear ligaments.
Speaking from experience, both forms hurt. A lot.
It's basically satanic yoga.
What follows is a more complete glossary of terms.
1. Rear naked choke
This one is fairly self-explanatory. The opponent has her back to the fighter with the advantage. That fighter then reaches an arm around the front of the opponent. She places the arm across the opponent's neck, bends it back and squeezes. She uses her other arm to leverage the bent arm, choking the opponent and stopping the blood flow through her carotid artery. If the fighters are on the ground, the dominant fighter will try to hook her legs around the opponent's legs and arch her back, stretching her and pulling her down to the ground where hopefully she passes out or taps out, or the referee ends the bout.
2. Arm bar
If the fighter manages to throw her opponent onto her back, the dominant fighter might try to break the opponent's arm (or at least create the sensation that she might break it). She'd do this by quickly moving to the ground, too, and simultaneously throwing her legs over her opponent's face and grabbing the nearest arm. At this point, the two fighters would be positioned in an L shape with the opponent's elbow near the dominant fighter's belly button. While pushing down with her legs, the dominant fighter would arch her back, lift her hips and pull back on the opponent's arm, bending that arm backward at the elbow. If she were smart, the opponent would then tap out with her free arm, saving the other one from snapping.
3. Guillotine
Imagine both fighters are on their feet. One fighter charges the other. She then appears to be on the verge of dropping down to tackle the other fighter by pulling her down by one or two legs. Before she succeeds in doing this, her opponent can hook her arm under the opponent's neck and pull up, squeezing the carotid artery in a move similar to the rear naked choke.
4. Paintbrush
The name of this move does not do justice to the amount of pain it inflicts. It happens when one fighter is on her back, on the ground, with her knees bent. She's down, but she is probably trying to punch her opponent in the face while also bouncing her hips forcefully to upset the other fighter's balance. To change the scenario, all the fighter on top has to do is quickly grab one of her opponent's arms with both hands and force it to the ground, "painting" the mat with the back of the opponent's hand. As the dominant fighter is pushing down on the hand, she's also lifting her opponent's elbow, torquing the shoulder. Doing this does leave the fighter on top vulnerable to punches from the downed opponent's free hand. But if the dominant fighter performs the move quickly enough and with enough force, the other opponent will tap out before getting too many punches in.
Two of the most popular websites for mixed martial arts enthusiasts are sherdog.com and MMAWeekly.com.
Jody De Simone's website is crashcoursedesimone.com.
Mixed martial arts fighters are required to wear mouth guards and 4-ounce half gloves, which protect fighters' hands but let their fingers be free. Fighters also wrap athletic tape around their hands.
In Oregon and most other places, state officials must watch fighters tape their hands to make sure there are no dangerous objects hidden under the tape.
On Dec. 17, professional mixed martial arts fighter Justin Levens and his wife were found dead in their California condo. Police suspect a murder-suicide.
The FCFF's next promotion, Rumble at the Roseland 41, is Jan. 10 at Portland's Roseland Theater. Tickets at ticketswest.com.
WWeek 2015