Women in Combat

The story of Talor Kebel, an amateur mixed martial artist, who fought six fights in one year.

Story by JAMES EGARAN

In a tiki-themed bar in Hawaii, people stop sipping their mai tais, and become silent and wide-eyed as they noticed three people walk-in. They stare at the 5-foot-4-inch brunette women with a swollen face. The bartender stops and takes notice of her bruised black eyes, red skin which resembles raw meat and puffed lips; she can barely talk. Everyone in the bar slowly drifts their gaze at the men accompanying her. The men looked right back at them, feeling the atmosphere turn to disgust.

“Don’t worry she’s a mixed martial artist,” one of the men said, grinning nervously. “She just had a fight, she’s not battered. It’s fine.”

A few hours earlier she made her way up the steps of the ring with a smile. She walked in with a bit of a skip, swinging her arms and stretching out her shoulders. On her left arm a faint tattoo circles her bicep and on the front of her left shoulder is a small tattoo of a rainbow. She stands on her side of the cage.

“I’m about to go into a cage and that girl is going to hit me as hard as she can and I better hit her as hard as I can,” she thinks to herself.

The cage door closes.

It is Talor Kebel’s first mixed martial arts bout. Kebel prefers to smile while facing her opponent and before touches gloves with them and likes to offer a high-five them or say good luck. Her opponent stares back with an intense expression. The aggressive look isn’t Kebel’s style. The fight is set at the 125 pound class. Kebel is underweight at 121 pounds, while her opponent had to cut to reach 125 pounds. Fighting at a weight class above didn’t bother her.

“She was a Hawaiian native, very muscular, very strong. It was a weight class heavier than I should have been at,” Kebel said. “I was pretty light at the time.”

The fighters approach each other. Kebel doesn’t know how she is going to fight so she remains cautious. Her opponent ends up being an aggressive kickboxer with a mean left hook. Only after Kebel gets struck does she notice the damage. The bounce from each step causes an uncomfortable throbbing sensation in her face.

“She definitely did not want to go into the clinch and get onto the ground with me,” Kebel said. “But she whooped my ass standing.”

Throughout the fight Kebel keeps up her strategy of turning it into a grappling match instead of a striking match. She knows she won’t out-strike her opponent.

Kebel stands across from her opponent, body slightly hunched forward, legs slightly bent, fists near her face. Kebel closes the distance by extending both her arms toward her opponent’s upper body. Grappling is the best way to nullify her opponent’s aggressive striking because it can force her to stop striking and start defending.

“Shit, this girl is going to drop me,” Kebel thinks to herself.

Every time Kebel would try to close the distance and go into the clinch, her opponent quickly responds by striking her face repeatedly. The strikes were hard.

“Instead of moving my head and doing something about it, I just decided I was going for the clinch, but I kept eating punches to get in there,” Kebel said.

The bout went the distance. Both fighters approach the middle of the ring and stand with the referee in between, holding each of their hands. With a swollen face, Kebel stands smiling during the announcement of winner. The referee holds up her opponent’s hand.

“I was happy about it going the full three rounds. She didn’t knock me out, didn’t submit [to] me,” Kebel said. “I went the full three rounds, she was a tough opponent.”

The fight in Hawaii wouldn’t be Kebel’s last. In 2017, she fought six times, in four kickboxing matches and two MMA.

In a scientific study by the University of Alberta, 59.4 percent mixed martial artists received some form of injury. Those injuries were mostly bruises and contusions, which are minor. The study also showed mixed martial artists are less likely to receive serious injury, compared to boxing which are loss of conscious and head trauma.

A week after Kebel’s fight, she still had bruises on her face. Everywhere she went, people

looked at her with concern. If she was hanging out with any of her guy friends, they would get dirty looks from people. What surprised her the most is no one asked her about it.

“They have no idea, you don’t look at a person and think that they’re a fighter right?” Kebel said. “You look at a woman with a black eye and you think she’s being battered.”

After a year of consistently training and taking fights, Kebel is taking a break, but is looking forward to stepping into the cage again. She still trains with other fighters to support them.

Aside from building up her confidence, Kebel said there is always more to learn and everyone can always get better and be supportive toward each other. She never expected it to be a team sport because of the support she received from her coaches and the people she trains with.

“You need the extra support. You’re getting punched in the face. It’s a scary thing,” Kebel said. “Being there for each other is really important.”

A friend of Kebel’s recommended she try MMA. Kebel always wanted to defend herself efficiently and was interested in athletics. MMA was a way for her to move her body in different ways than she had through other sports. Ultimately, it was the constant support she received from others that continued to push her along the way.

Kebel’s said her parents are proud of her and think it’s important for women to learn self-defense. Her friends think it is badass, but sometimes can get too into it.

“Every time we go out and my girlfriends trying to get rowdy, they’re like ‘it’s all right we got Talor she can beat people up’ and I’m like ‘please don’t start fights with people because I’m in your group, like stop it!’” Kebel said.

It is a basket of mixed emotions when entering the cage and fighting someone. For Kebel, she feels intimidated by the crowd, but at the same time excited and empowered. She fell in love with MMA for its intensity and atmosphere.

It had not even been a week after her kickboxing bout when Kebel received a phone call from her coach asking if she would like to participate in a fight three weeks away in Hawaii. She immediately accepted.

“I mean it’s Hawaii!” Kebel said.