12/25/2023 0 Comments Araya waterson![]() ![]() Here, she's pictured in Thailand with one of her early supporters, Sityodtong. ![]() Waterson found her combat sports career through Muay Thai about 15 years ago. It really gives me confidence because Josh is a 190-pound grown man and couldn't buck me off." "He puts his headgear on and lets me go to town. "Josh volunteered himself as my punching dummy," Waterson says, laughing after catching her breath. So what I try to do is emulate the opponent that is coming up and let her beat me up." "And then sometimes with the men, when Michelle really starts to hit them, the ego comes out and they get very aggressive. ![]() Waterson's female training partners "know what hurts and what doesn't, and that sometimes doesn't benefit her because they're trying to stay back," he says. She and Gomez started that morning with a long run through their neighborhood's 5,900-foot altitude, then two hours sparring at Jackson Wink MMA Academy before a specialized workout with Waterson's jiu-jitsu coach here in the garage.īut the workout with Gomez, 34, was critical. This is Waterson's fourth workout of the day. Michelle Waterson, still taking huge gulps of air, asks Araya, "How was school?" Araya tells her it was great as she flies through the air on her rope. Josh Gomez pulls off the padded headgear, bodysuit and boxing mitts with the word "Karate" stitched on one hand and "Hottie" on the other and laughs. Instead, she beelines for the giant rope hanging from the ceiling, launching her body at it to swing back and forth through the room until her parents wear themselves out. Caitlin O'Hara for ESPNĪs Araya comes flying in, past the sauna and the punching bags, her mother unleashes a flurry of punches at her father before hooking a leg around him, throwing him to the ground and elbowing him a few times in the head.Īraya barely takes note of any of it. Michelle Waterson has turned her garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, into a full-blown training facility. They bought it for the massive stand-alone garage. But her parents didn't buy the house for the pool or the kitchen or the master bedroom. Her family has been in the new house for only a few months, and cardboard boxes still line the dining room walls. ![]() She and her family have defied stereotype, allowing Araya to become the most powerful force behind one of the most successful fighters in the UFC - a fighter who was about to enter the Octagon and launch the biggest night in UFC history.Ī FEW WEEKS earlier, back home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Araya jumps out of her grandmother's car, ditches her backpack in the kitchen and runs through the backyard toward the garage. If her mother had followed the typical MMA playbook, Araya would never have been here at all. Waterson brings the "It" factor to the OctagonĮvery time UFC fighter Michelle Waterson steps into the Octagon, there's much more at stake than winning a belt.īecause Araya Gomez has never missed one of her mom's fights. But she knew more about rear naked choke holds and straight arm bars than most of the wannabe brawlers surrounding her in the stands. She was easily the youngest and smallest spectator here. Which was why security had assigned a bodyguard, replete with the standard UFC uniform of bald head and long beard, to follow the 7-year-old girl with dark-brown braids as she navigated her way to her seat inside T-Mobile Arena. It was a heady mix of wealth, alcohol and simmering violence, and rumors of possible brawls circulated in the hours leading up to the big October fight. Throughout the day, diamonds, sheath dresses and slurring Russian accents filled nearly every elevator. Others, with their country's distinctive green, white and orange flag wrapped around their shoulders, stumbled through the slot machines, yelling at girlfriends and reeking of spilled beer. Irishmen, with their lilting brogue bouncing off the cavernous walls outside the Hakkasan nightclub at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, grappled on the casino floor, oblivious to the fact that the sun was starting to rise. The bodies started falling as early as 6 a.m. ![]()
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