‘Not a Girl Fight’
March 23, 2009 • By Tim Chapman, The Breeze
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HARRISONBURG, Va. — Emily Dubas swears she’d never start a fight with anyone — outside of a cage, that is.
At 5-foot-5 and 124 pounds, this thin James Madison University sophomore would catch some people off guard with her blonde ponytail, perfect smile and soft-spoken voice.
When she showed up Friday to weigh in for her first ever Mixed Martial Arts fight, one of the Battle in the Burg promoters wasn’t too sure.
The West Chester, Pa., native politely wished her opponent good luck in a promotional video for Saturday’s fight. The promoter questioned her toughness, hoping for a little trash talk from Dubas.
“I turn it on,” she said with more assertiveness.
And did she.
After three grueling 3-minute rounds, Dubas bloodied the face of Mary Scott, a sophomore at Christopher Newport University, earning a unanimous decision from the three judges at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds.
“I felt pretty calm the whole time,” Dubas said. “I just waited for the openings. I don’t think there was an exact turning point and I just had to stay focused and when there was something that I saw open I took it.”
If the roar of the fans was any measure of the turning point, then a second-round kick to Scott’s face shattered the meter. Dubas, who trains three days a week with the JMU Tae Kwon Do club, waited patiently for an opening to bring her right foot high.
In the first round Dubas took the brunt of the action as Scott spent a majority of the round in mount, raining left and rights to the face. The referee told Dubas she had to do something or he was going to call the fight.
Dubas got off her back, returning to her feet and exploding in the last 10 seconds to connect on four punches to Scott’s face.
When “she was on her feet she was doing fine,” said Jonathan Price, Dubas’ trainer. “When she got on the ground… she got a little scared.”
She looked anything but scared in the second round. Dubas allowed Scott to approach her corner, in order to keep the fight within earshot of Price’s instructions.
Scott forced Dubas against the cage, but received two stern kicks to the solar plexus, the pit of the stomach. Dubas then delivered a barrage of right-and-left-hand combinations before cracking her right foot on Scott’s jaw.
Scott, who adds at least 10 more pounds of muscle than Dubas, tried desperately in the last two rounds to just hold Dubas tight and not leave any space for jabs, hooks or kicks.
“She’s got a good right hand,” Scott said. “All props to her. But every time she’s got a good hand, I’ve got a good heart. And every time my head went backwards I knew there was no way I was going down.”
The Lexington native, who trains in Virginia Beach, didn’t go down, but the third round was much of the same.
By the final bell Scott’s nose was bleeding heavily, while the victorious Dubas escaped with a small cut above her left eye and a small bruise on her forehead.
“You don’t really feel anything out there, like you really don’t,” Dubas said. “You’re just so focused on what you have to do that getting hit or hurting yourself is not an issue at all.”
Price, who also instructs the JMU Tae Kwon Do club, was most pleased with the fight’s ability to dispel stereotypes of women’s mixed martial arts.
“In a nutshell, the thing about the fight I’m most happy about was it was a representation of athleticism, not a girl fight,” Price said. “That was huge because these ladies deserve respect ’cause they work their butts off.”
Freshman Herman Brar Loses
In the second fight of the evening, which featured a JMU student, freshman Herman Brar made an early exit — and not the desired one.
Brar (2-1) took a heavy right hook from Cole Presley (6-2), seconds into what was billed as the amateur fight of the night, and wasn’t able to make it out of the first round as he was submitted by rear naked choke.
The Herndon native prefers to fight a stand-up match but wasn’t able to connect on any substantial arm or leg blows and was caught with a huge kick midway through the opening round.
“I’m actually really happy I lost because it taught me a lot,” Brar said. “If I had won by elbows and stuff then I would have never learned to come off aggressive next time. This loss was actually more of a moral victory for me.”
Contact Tim Chapman at breezeeditor@gmail.com
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