The old means to establish a martial art’s effectiveness were: •Argumentation: “This art combines hard and soft styles, so it’s the best, I’m 100% sure.” •Anecdote: “O’Sensei once dodged bullets fired by experts at 25 meters, twice. He was a wizard.” •Appeal to Authority: “Bruce Lee taught this to Navy SEALs!” •Demonstration: “Grab my wrist. No, the other one.”
Then MMA came along, testing experts from various disciplines against each other; a large, verifiable body of knowledge of what works emerged (along with a vast body of knowledge of what fails). However, there is today another means to know what works for self-defense. Cellphone and security cams are everywhere, which has opened a window onto thousands of cases of martial arts working and failing on the street. These can be roughly divided into several main categories: •Mutual Combat; •Dojo Storm; •Bouncer; •Informal; •Style vs. Style; •Self-Defense.
The final one, self-defense, is the proportional use of force to protect against an unprovoked attack that objectively threatens imminent injury or worse. A remarkable example occurred in 2022, at the Brunswick Street Mall in Brisbane, Australia.
Pro welterweight MMA fighter Viktor Lyall was minding his own business , when he reportedly saw two punks – Josh Townsend and Jessee Swain – stomping a man in an alley. The fighter promptly broke it up. Then the two attackers relentlessly followed and harassed Lyall, spurred on by a Swain’s partner, Tia-rose Shaw. Her father is a bodybuilder, as you will hear.
How Did Martial Arts Work?
The altercation is a seminar in using distance management – not getting close enough to get hit, while momentarily stepping into the pocket to hit back first. It’s also a seminar in situational awareness, never letting the second assailant get in position to sucker punch, something the punk was desperately trying to do. Further, Lyall was simultaneously making sure his own companion was close and safe. And it is a seminar in staying cool and controlling temper, in the face of extreme and prolonged harassment that included being spit on.
“Not all heroes wear capes,” wrote Lyall’s friend, BKFC star Bec Rodriguez, who originally posted the video.
“I never laid hands on either of those males, nor needed to until the events of that video transpired and I needed to defend myself,” Lyall told The Chronicle. “I was merely involving myself to extricate another party. That’s when I got involved, and that’s the only reason I got involved.
“You can see quite clearly from the video that I don’t want to hurt anyone, otherwise I would have, and I’m walking away getting followed.”
The pair remind of the jackals referenced in Christopher Walken’s Lion Speech. However, Lyall requests that there be no further steps taken against the two unfortunates. He hopes that their enshrinement in the global @$$hole Hall of Fame was sufficient.
“As they’re identifiable, I hope people can also respect the privacy of the aggressors and not ruin their livelihoods or whatever they do,” wrote the fighter. “Although the two males were together beating someone brutally, it was stopped. That video going viral is probably (hopefully) enough punishment for them. Please don’t harass. Ultimately, to me, it was just a bit of a tiff. They got plowed on. It happens. It’s good nobody got hurt.”
Being knocked down in training is a signature moment in a fighter’s career or lack of one. Perhaps half the people quit not long after it happens, typically without realizing why. It’s a big deal, getting knocked down, and bigger still to stand up. That’s why the Japanese proverb “Nana korobi, ya oki” (“Fall down seven times, stand up eight”) holds so much meaning in mixed martial arts.
No fighter so well personifies the resilience, optimism, and self-belief contained in those words than does Roxanne Modafferi, who had her final fight at UFC 271 on February 12, 2022. It was her 50th bout, breaking the record for most fights by a female competitor in MMA history.
“The Happy Warrior” is the last active fighter from a time when female athletes in “cage fighting” were an oddity. The fact that her “Happy Warrior” nickname was a suggestion from a fan on MySpace gives some indication of how long she has been in the game.
Kirik was in her corner for her first fight, and her last, and many in between, in Los Angeles, Japan, and Asbury Park, New Jersey, among other locales. Below he offers a look back at her career.
Origin Story of “The Happy Warrior”
In 2001, Modafferi walked into my fight gym as a college freshman. She was not a gifted athlete and was kinder than a hippie. I didn’t bother to ask if she had aspirations to fight; I wasn’t even certain at the time if she could catch a frisbee. I’d be more inclined to believe a sighting of a yeti wearing a Pats jersey, than what was to follow.
However, Modafferi possessed a relentless curiosity, focus, and aptitude for the sport, unhampered by the ego that so typically gets in the way until it is beaten out. Despite a lack of natural athletic ability, she stood out from the beginning. The only time she cried in training was once, from frustration, when I wouldn’t hit her hard enough.
Brazilian Jiu-jitsu at its most fundamental level is a method of reducing the opponent’s options from countless to just three: tap, nap, or snap. Before long, Modafferi was training at several gyms and adjusting the attitude of newcomer frat boys who went too hard, by reducing their choices to just two, or in practice just one. Without the fortitude to go to sleep, they always tapped.
Long enthralled by Japanese culture, she did a junior year abroad in Japan. Already so stalwart a submission wrestler that she was a “Competitor of the Year” for the then regional grappling organization NAGA, the transition to MMA was natural. Roxy went 3-0 in Japanese women’s events, under rules that prohibited face-punching on the ground.
When Roxy returned to the US for her senior year of college, women’s mixed martial arts was barely acknowledged, and when it was, the typical reaction was disparaging remarks about a fighter’s sexual orientation or sexual attractiveness. A normal person would not enter the sport. But she stood up.
Rise Through The Ranks in WMMA’s Dark Ages
The sterling exception to WMMA’s poor reception was perhaps the most underappreciated figure in the history of the sport, Jeff Osborne. His HOOK ‘n SHOOT promotion showcased WMMA to the world with admiration and polish. Jen Howe, the then most dominant female fighter on the planet, was 12-0 with eleven stoppages. When Howe’s opponent for a title fight dropped out, another pioneer, Tara LaRosa, who knew Roxanne from Northeast grappling events and recently lost to Howe under MMA rules, told Osborne that the utterly unheralded Modafferi would win.
Howe made the title offer, Modafferi asked me, I said no with a warm guffaw, and she flew to Evanstown, Indiana anyway, without my even knowing. And she won. It was impossible.
Then she entered a one-night, open-weight eight-woman tournament in Japan. In the first fight, Modafferi beat by decision a 200+ pound jiu-jitsu black belt from Brazil in Ana Carolina by decision. I sat in her corner, in awe. In the second fight, she lost by decision to Megumi Yabushita, who had just won her initial fight by breaking Shannon Hooper’s arm with a front roll. Yabushita would go on to win the event when the great Erin Toughill was disqualified for an illegal elbow, that audibly broke ribs.
Next up was a rematch with Howe, and Modafferi won that too. When we went back to the locker room, I threw my sweatshirt over a mirror, as she was pretty banged up. Roxy found the mirror, looked at her face, and smiled.
It took place in Utah, and at the airport the next day, everyone looked pissed off at me. After a few minutes, I realized an older guy standing next to a young woman with a black eye engendered some assumptions; the good men of Utah appeared ready to hang me.
I asked Roxy to take the championship belt out of its case and throw it over her shoulder. Never egotistical, she declined. Not wanting to learn that I can’t fly by being thrown off an airport balcony, I insisted, and she agreed. Thereafter it was all smiles and questions at SLC International. That was “The Happy Warrior’s” first great peak.
Less Happy Times For a Warrior
Then Roxanne went 1-3, losing to Laura D’August, LaRosa, and Shayna Baszler. The sole win was a rematch with Yabushita. Five years into the sport, with a 4-4 record under full MMA rules, on a two-fight losing streak, it would be a good time to retire and move on to other, more fruitful pursuits. But Modafferi stood up again. It was 2006.
Now graduated from college and living and training in Japan, she went 8-1, beating the likes of Vanessa Porto, the far larger Marloes Coenen, and winning a rematch with LaRosa.
In the Porto fight, which took place in Los Angeles, Modafferi’s French braids got loose. I had everything in my cut kit but a hair tie, so I dashed to a ring card girl and got one. At one point Roxy suffered a monster slam. I was concerned about whether her confidence might have been shaken to some degree after being slammed so hard. But I didn’t want to even hint at mental weakness, so in the corner, I asked how she felt about the slam. “When she lifted me high up and I was heading down, I was thinking ‘Wheeeee,’” replied Modafferi with a thoughtful smile.
That run earned her a shot at Strikeforce women’s bantamweight champion Sarah Kaufman. But Kaufman knocked out Roxy with a slam.
Modafferi was released by Strikeforce and lost the next four. A five-fight losing streak, after a decade in the sport, nearing 30, is the definition of when it’s time to leave the gloves in the cage. But she stood up once again.
Her legacy was such that she was asked to be a cast member in The Ultimate Fighter 17. Picked dead last, Modafferi won her first TUF fight versus Valerie Letourneau by submission. She lost her second fight to Jessica Rakoczy, but was given a UFC opportunity in the TUF Finale against Raquel Pennington, and lost that too. Modafferi was now on a 1-7 run, in her 30s. That’s a far, far fall. But she stood up.
Syndicate MMA & Evolution to UFC Title Shot
Modafferi loved the training in the US that she received during TUF and left her beloved Japan to move to Las Vegas to train with John Wood and his world-class team at Syndicate MMA. Then she signed with Invicta Fighting Championship. If Jeff Osborne’s HOOK ‘n SHOOT was the slender thread that supported WMMA in the early years, Shannon Knapp’s Invicta FC was by 2014 the deep roots it so desperately needed, and remains so today.
The grappling-based Modafferi developed much-improved striking at Syndicate, and went 4-1 in the premiere WMMA organization. The run was capped with a title shot versus then-flyweight champion Jennifer Maia. The winner would be the best 125 women’s MMA fighter on Earth, the UFC having only a 135 division at that point. “The Happy Warrior” lost a split decision.
Modafferi won two more after the Invicta title fight loss and entered TUF a second time. This time she was picked first. That season was capped with a bout against Nicco Montano for the inaugural UFC women’s flyweight championship. Roxy lost by decision, but it was the “Fight of the Night”, earning her a $50,000 bonus, plus an extra $30,000 in Reebok Money. That was in 2017, and Modafferi fought on.
The Last Run
For nearly five years, at the highest level of the sport, four times Roxanne alternated wins and losses. Then the pattern broke, and she lost two in a row.
At UFC 271, Roxanne lost her final fight, a controversial split decision to Casey O’Neill.
The secret to a long life is knowing when it’s time to go. As planned, Roxanne left her gloves in the Octagon.
Today
Today, Roxanne lives in Las Vegas and is happily married to an amazing man, and fellow fighter, Chris Roman. He proposed on national television immediately after winning a fight.
In the 1940s, much was made of the great heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis being a remarkable African American athlete. Jimmy Cannon set that straight when he famously reminded, “he is a credit to his race, the human race.” Modafferi is a pivotal figure in the history of WMMA, the final female fighter from the sport’s early days. But that misses the greater point. She is the nicest person I have ever met and destroys stereotypes about what women fighters are. But that too misses the point.
Modafferi’s message is larger than WMMA. It’s larger than MMA. It’s “Nana korobi, ya oki” – Fall down seven times, stand up eight. From her very first day, Roxanne Modafferi has lived it like no other.
