6 minute read
Oh Baby, Fighter Chick Makes Her Pro Debut
Oh Baby, Fighter Chick Makes Her Pro Debut
By Jodi Nash
“An injury is not just a process of recovery, it’s a process of discovery.”
So says Conor McGregor, the notorious Irish fighter and the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) most marketable mixed martial arts star.
My daughter Carsyn Nash, aka Fighter Chick and a Fauquier County native, can relate. After two years off and two successive surgeries, one for a fractured tibia and ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, the other for a serious sternoclavicular joint repair, Carsyn went back into the octagon on Saturday, June 17 for her professional debut in the King of Sparta Middleweight Tournament in Superior, Colorado.
After two months of “fight camp”—intense training four to six hours a day in the various combat disciplines—she started cutting weight at 9:30 a.m. Friday morning.
I flew out, rolling into her Denver apartment in the middle of the torture. She’s 30 years old, walks around at 130 pounds, but fights at 115, with a one-pound overage allowance. After three brutal “burrito” sessions, wrapped in a portable sauna-like tinfoil suit between alternating hot baths, she sweats down to 117 pounds, 4 ounces.
Another burrito, but this time a heating pad is added. Naked, she hits 117. I pat her dry, removing every teardrop of moisture. Her eyes are sunken, her cheek bones prominent, her hip bones jutting out like headlands on a sandy beach. It’s scary, but Coach Vellor Caballero is a former Army medic. He checks her pulse, makes sure she’s still sweating. Time is short. The weigh-in is at 6 p.m. and we have traffic.
It’s a tense drive to Blue Sport Stable in Superior, with Carsyn crashed in the back seat. We unload her and her “refuel” bag, filled with Gatorade, coconut water, protein snacks, fruit and a second sweatsuit.
Inside the immense sport arena at Angry Horse Eatery, the most exotic of the MMA fighter species have gathered, mostly men glistening with sweat, tatted up, shaved or in dreads, waiting to weigh in.
Her opponent makes weight. Vellor and I hold up the blanket to shield Carsyn from sight, and she steps on the scale naked—116 pounds, 3 ounces. My heart plummets, I feel sick. Because weigh-ins are still in progress, Vellor tells her to put on her second sweat suit. He runs her for 12 minutes, then she hits the bathroom to try to evacuate every last drop of moisture from her body.
They return, up goes the blanket, and again she’s on the scale. “Carsyn Nash!! 116 pounds!!!” shouts the officiant. In a moment of prayerful ecstasy, I drop the blanket to hug my she-cub and the fight crowd gets an unexpected peep show. There is goodnatured chuckling and light applause, and someone yells “You must be mom!” Carsyn is completely unfazed, jubilant to have made weight. We wrap her up and head off to Benihana’s for hibachi eats and quiet celebration.
On Fight Day, after a long night of rehydration and breakfast with me and her siblings, we get Carsyn’s hair braided in tight cornrows at 12:15 p.m. She rests at her apartment before heading to the venue with Coach Vellor around 4 p.m.
When we arrive at the venue at 7:30, it’s a raucous atmosphere, but Carsyn is third from last on the main card so we have plenty of time to watch other matches. It goes fast. After a number of TKOs, submissions and stoppages from injuries, suddenly, she’s up, much sooner than anticipated.
She walks in to Mungo Jerry’s lighthearted “In the Summertime,” her fight song, wearing her fuzzy slippers and fight shorts. The hovering officials tell her she can’t have pockets, so a teammate zips to a merchandise stand to grab a new pocketless pair.
Now, Carsyn is in her corner dancing lightly on her feet, and intensely focused. It’s been a brutal journey, and she’s facing three five-minute rounds in the women’s strawweight division.
“Ladieees and Gentlemen, in the Blue Corner, standing 5 foot, 2 inches tall, weighing in at 116 pounds, she’s a freestyle fighter making her professional MMA debut with High Altitude Martial Arts out of Denver, Colorado….Carsyn Nashtybusiness Nasssssh!”
As she steps in to engage Serena Ochoa, she weighs 130, right where her coaches want her.
From the get-go, Carsyn seems to dominate, looking crisp and technical. She’s a natural grappler but has used her downtime during rehab to concentrate on striking. Her coaches are coaching from outside of the cage.
“Keep those feet active Carsyn! Sync it up! Double up your right Carsyn! Inside, inside. There’s no power there Carsyn…take your feet with you!”
She made some beautiful sweeps during the bout, dropping her opponent on her back for the ground combat Carsyn loves. Then the coaching cues change.
“Stay on top – behind the elbows Carsyn. Body triangle! Close that wedge Carsyn! Knee on belly! Knee on belly! Off balance her…”
I can’t remember anything except being a lunatic beside the cage, howling “Get her Carsyn! You GO baby! Finish her Carsyn, finisssssh her!”
During a one-minute rest period, as Carsyn’s coaches cleaned up her cut eye, I realized her siblings, Gage and Lark, are gone. Embarrassed by their mama’s raging, they moved elsewhere. I don’t blame them.
Fighter Chick won by unanimous decision. She came away with a $1,000 check and a rainbow of a shiner. When I asked what she learned from this comeback experience, she said, “It felt super surreal – the first real professional training structure I’ve had. Now I know I’m a quick learner, after years of trial and error with not much guidance.”
The feedback from her coaches and sparring partners was all the same: you could have finished that fight anytime you wanted.
Carsyn put it this way, “I used all the techniques I practiced and put on a good professional show. Now I need to use my ability to ignite the brawl and hit hard when I still have the gas to move away if she throws back. If I’m better everywhere than she is, it’s okay to take that risk.”
I asked if she could hear her three coaches over the crazy crowd cacophony. “I’m lucky,” she said. “I hear only the voices I’ve been training with. Other fighters struggle with that. If you trust your coaches and HEAR them, all you have to worry about is having a sound defense, because they’re playing the rest of the game for you.”
If you say so baby…but over your mama’s mad shrieking, I don’t know how you do that.
