Fighting Club Helps Ladies Get TUFF
She couldn't feel one of her feet. She'd been going nonstop for over half an hour. Her body dripped sweat and exuded pain.
And Elizabeth Ashley just wanted more.
Locked in her first night of Tidewater Ultimate Female Fighting (TUFF) competition at the Virginia Beach bar Steppin' Out last weekend, Ashley was taking on Chelsea Culbertson. Over and over, the two traded leglocks, headlocks, armlocks, and just about every type of submission hold that one can apply to the human anatomy. Sometimes it looked as though Ashley had Culbertson beat, and that Culbertson would tap out and let everyone take a breath of fresh air. Then she'd find a way out of Ashley's hold, plant her opponent on the mat, and nearly get her to submit.
Ultimate fighters, martial artists, and professional boxer get a break every three or four minutes, but these girls would have none of that. This mat war would continue until someone gave in, or the bar closed for the night. As the match time ticked over 40 minutes, everyone started wondering if the manager would have to extend Steppin' Out's hours.
"I told her to tap out, that she'd feel better afterward," Ashley remembers. "She said that she wasn't tapping out, and I said that I wasn't either, but somebody had to go down.
"She had me in a position where it really hurt. She had me in a scissors, squeezing my ribs. But I'm the kind of person that doesn't give up. I just don't do it. If I'm in a position where I'm stuck, I work my way out of it."
As the cheers and shouts of encouragement of their families and other TUFF fighters raged through the air, Culbertson felt the same way.
"I had already lost one match, and I couldn't lose another one," she says. "Lizzie was really good. She squeezed my ribs pretty good, and at one point, I had my hands up in the air, ready to slam them down, but I couldn't lose another fight."
The women weren't battling for the seven figures of prize money that some pro boxers enjoy - there was no purse on the line. They were grapping in front of about a hundred fans - not bad for a local bar, but a far cry from the thousands that crowd into arenas and the millions that subscribe to pay-per-view to watch Ultimate Fighting Championships and Mixed Martial Arts events.
This was about someone getting the chance to say that they never gave up. To know that they went the distance. Forgetting the fatigue. Ignoring the pain. Just about having the intestinal fortitude to say that they made it through, no matter what it took.
But as tough as the fights may have been, they were nothing compared to those that some of the TUFF fighters have been through since childhood...
Most toddlers spend their first few years learning the basics of the alphabet, playing with toys, and catching the occasional Saturday morning cartoon. Brooke Jordan did all of those things - except from a hospital bed.
"I spent a lot of my childhood at the Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters," she recalls. "I had kidney and bladder surgery, and lung problems. They thought I had cystic fibrosis."
The diagnosis was slightly better; she "only" suffered from asthma. Still, her illness robbed her of youth sports competition, for the time being.
For her first half year of life, everything was going fine for Elizabeth Ashley. But when she was about seven months old, the most unwelcome of visitors arrived.
"I had meningitis, and it caused my brain to swell so much that it cracked the inside of my ears," she says.
Her hearing would never be the same. Fortunately, her athletic career would be just fine; Ashley spent a year practicing her kickboxing skills, then played volleyball all through high school.
"When I was younger, (the hearing problem) didn't really bother me," says Ashley, who wears hearing aids to help out. "I learned some sign language, and I can read people's lips, so I don't really have to have sound. It depends on what's around me, how close the walls are, how loud it is, vibrations. I can hear some, but it's not really clear."
Sitting in front of the television watching the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Jordan watched Mary Lou Retton wow the gymnastics world as the first American to win the all-around title.
That was when Jordan decided that asthma had been pushing her around long enough.
She hit her own local gymnastics squad, winning a scholarship to the University of Vermont and coaching the sport. After leaving Vermont, she spent a year on the sidelines of Old Dominion University basketball games, cheerleading on the Monarchs.
Over the past few months, word started coming out about the Tidewater Ultimate Female Fighting club in Virginia Beach.
Grown out of a self-defense course, it's a way for women to stay in shape, albeit in some painful manners.
"We've taken out a lot of the UFC moves to keep girls from getting hurt," says coach Gary Pekoe, whose Lynnhaven Road school has been going since last year. "We've taken out arm chokes, rear naked chokes, striking to the face and the body, armbars, joint locks, and anything that, in the heat of the moment, could hurt someone. The key is not for these girls to get hurt, but to go out and still do incredible tough submission-type moves that would work in a self-defense situation."
Women in combat attempt to lock each other into submission holds with their arms and legs. They try to immobilize each other by crushing the breath out of an opponent, stretching their arms and shoulders nearly out of the socket, or whatever else works.
"There's a tremendous opportunity for women to fight like this without getting all bruised and beaten up," Pekoe says. "We've had women with MMA backgrounds who get tired after going with our girls, because they're not used to not having breaks.
Ashley, now a student at Tidewater Community College on her way to a career in physical therapy, stepped into a new sport, and partially back towards an old one.
"I missed kickboxing," she says, "and I wanted to see if I could do this. It was fun for me. This is different, it's unique, and it's not something that everybody does. It's like submission wrestling. We go to a tap-out. In practice, we use gloves and do body punches, but that's just in sparring. In fights, there's no punching or striking."
A future nurse (and current part-time model), Jordan followed soon after.
"I liked wrestling my guy friends, and I like physical outlets," she says. "I get an adrenalin rush. It's very, very competitive. We are grappling, just not hitting each other.
My asthma hurt my endurance at first, but now I can go a lot farther, longer than I thought I could."
As the night at Steppin' Out rolled around, the two new ultimate warriors and their fellow fighters got ready to show off their skills to their loved ones and on one another.
"Whoever dominates the longest wins," Ashley explains. "With this, you don't get breaks, and you don't get rounds. You have to have a LOT of endurance. With every fight and every practice, you learn more. You learn from your mistakes, and what you could and should have done."
Jordan didn't have time for that anymore - it was on.
"It was my first show, and I was extremely nervous," she says. "But it was a good feeling, because I hadn't been nervous in a long time. But once you start, you don't really hear anything."
Not until the crowd cheered and her hand was raised in victory. Ashley also won her first fight.
"I guess my hearing problem sort of helps," she says, "because it heightens my other senses. I'm concentrating, but at the same time, I'm motivated, because there's something that I lack, and I want to make up for it."
Many of the fights had gone only a few minutes, if that. The next bout would change everything.
Ashley started off fast, getting Culbertson off her feet and onto her back and stomach, and into a few submission holds that had worked for her fellow fighters early in the night. But Culbertson wouldn't quit, and slowly turned the tide, snaring Ashley's shoulders and stomach in holds of her own.
"About 10 minutes into the fight, I felt a crack in my foot, and it went numb," Ashley says. "It didn't really hurt, but it was tingly. But I wasn't going to prevent that from me from fighting."
Ten minutes ticked by, then 20. Powered on by some unseen force and encouragement from the fans, the two struggled on. Sweat matted their hair to their faces. The sound of heavy breathing filled the room. Several times, it appeared that one girl had the other down for good, only to have the tides turned again and again. The audience wondered how two human bodies could take so much punishment, put forth so much effort, for so much time.
If not for outside intervention, the fight might still be going. But after 40 minutes, the official called the match a draw, and both ladies left with their heads up high.
That is, until Ashley's adrenalin came to a crashing halt.
"During the fight, I wasn't tired at all, but after the fight, it really hit me," she says. "I couldn't walk on my foot, and it started swelling up really bad. My ribs were sore. The morning after, I felt like I'd been hit by an 18-wheeler. I couldn't walk; I had to crawl."
Still, she was anxious to get back to the TUFF mats just a few days later.
"I want TUFF to get bigger, maybe to the point that the (Ultimate Fighting Championships) are," she says (Pekoe said that he hopes to find a location for an event in November, and his future goals are television and possibly pay-per-view). "UFC fighters get all bloody, but for me, that's not attractive. With girls, it's clean fighting, but we still fight."
Jordan and the rest of the TUFF-sters are right there with her.
"Some people are leery about it," she says of the fighting style. "They're not sure what to expect. They might think it's just girls rolling around, but it's hardcore. Once people see it, they'd definitely come check it out."
For more information, call 757-618-2300 or visit www.tuffbeach.com.
