Jamey-Lyn Horth is the first Squamish woman to become a mixed-martial arts champion in the Battlefield Fight League, which had its 50th event earlier this month.
Horth competed in the 120-pound division and edged out her opponent Shawna Ram by a unanimous decision.
It was a fight that saw Horth playing to her strengths as a stand-up fighter.
Throughout the match, the 27-year-old blocked takedown attempts by Ram, who favoured a grappling approach that involved bringing adversaries to the ground and making them tap out from joint locks and holds.
“She got stuffed – she couldn’t get me down so she stood with me pretty much the whole fight,” said Horth. “I just kept punching and just kept kicking.”
Removing Ram’s ability to bring the fight to the ground allowed Horth to concentrate on her strengths – a style that favours strikes.
Indeed, a fighting approach that favoured those types of attacks was helped in part because of a vacation that turned into a boot camp at the last second.
Horth had initially booked herself a holiday in Thailand with her partner, but plans changed when she agreed to fight Ram before stepping onto the plane.
In addition to being a popular vacation getaway, Thailand also has a reputation for being the birthplace of muay thai, a fighting style widely embraced by many mixed martial artists as a partial template for how athletes should fight when standing up.
The country is legendary for training fighters exceptionally hard and subjecting them to brutal conditioning.
As one example, frequently-told stories in Thailand paint a picture of athletes punching, kicking and elbowing trees until their bones become rock-solid.
While Horth didn’t end up kicking trees until their trunks were severed, she did end up training hard.
The humidity and heat were also a big adjustment.
“You’re already sweating before you get there,” she said. “Fifteen minutes of skipping and you’re like, ‘Is class over yet?’”
She took 10 to 12 days of her two-week vacation to hit several gyms in the country, such as Diamond Muay Thai, which has drawn professional mixed martial artists from around the globe.
She sparred with pros and together they worked on sharpening her kicks and punches along with her knee and elbow strikes – the trademark of muay thai fighting. The effort paid off.
As Horth described the fight between herself and Ram, she compared it to a video game where she was a fighter landing multiple combinations over and over again.
“I got into the cage and that was it,” she said.
