K2 Interviews: Sarah Kaufman

The day before she stepped into the ring to fight Shayna Baszler, I told you not to sleep on Sarah Kaufman, the hard-hitting Victoria, British Columbia native who was 9-0 at the time and coming off a solid win over Miesha Tate.

A day later, I was posting congratulatory messages on her Facebook page. What? That's how I roll. Not two weeks later, Josh Gross of Sports Illustrated named Kaufman Female Fighter of the Year in his first half awards. I left that link on her Facebook page too, and followed it up with an interview request. Professional, I know.

For some reason she accepted, eagerly at that, and earlier this week we talked about the state of MMA in Canada, the build-up to the Carano - Cyborg fight and a host of other things in the second installment of the K2 Interviews Series.

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We’ll start with the ubiquitous first MMA interview question: When did you first become a fan of Mixed Martial Arts?

Well, I started doing Muay Thai with my coach, Adam Zugec, in late 2002. I had never watched a fight, or even been interested in combat sports, but it seemed like it might be fun to take. I was immediately addicted. I probably didn’t start watching any MMA until about 2 years later.

I specifically remember watching a fight where Bas Rutten badly broke his nose, was asked if he wanted to continue, and went back in. I think he won the fight. From there MMA grabbed my attention and I began following more of the events.

What was the progression between that initial interest and where you are now? How did you go from taking a couple classes to becoming a fighter?

Originally, I only took 1 class per week—as I had prior commitments with dance, school and work—but after a year, I jumped into as many classes as I could. Then another year later, I started grappling. I didn’t have any ambition of fighting, I just wanted to be as good as possible.

As I am an extremely competitive person (even playing dodgeball in the kids’ classes that I teach at ZUMA), as my technique improved, I wanted to try participating in some local tournaments. I did my first tournament in late 2004 and had a great time. At one tournament, I had a grappling match with Liz Posener.

A few months later, Adam got a call asking if I would like to fight Liz Posener in MMA. It sounded fun to me, so I trained really hard, fought hard, and came away with a 3rd round KO! That was June 3, 2006, and I haven’t looked back since.

In your opinion, what is the state of MMA in Canada and where do you see it going in the next year?

For a while, MMA in Canada (especially for females) was pretty good. There were quite a few bigger shows like KOTC, MFC, TKO, HCF, and XMMA, but now it seems like many of these organizations have had some problems, and have shut down. MFC is probably the biggest show in Canada, and they run a great show, but won’t have women on it.

KOTC goes all over Canada with their shows, and I fought for them at the beginning of my fighting career. There are a group of smaller shows that do well in their province; I think these are great for building up an inexperienced fighter, but the bigger stages for MMA are definitely in the US or overseas.

Right now, there are quite a few provinces that haven’t legalized MMA, so that has hindered MMA’s ability to really expand throughout Canada. Over the next year, I hope that Canada is able to keep developing shows that produce good fighters, as I think Canada has a lot of talent.

Do you think that once we see Ontario pass legislation that the rest of the provinces will fall in line and do the same?

I definitely hope so, but there is no guarantee. For example, there are MMA shows that are sanctioned in BC, but Vancouver will not allow it. Vancouver legalized MMA years ago (when it wasn’t all that popular), but then decided to take the sanctioning back.

Even when presented with statistics of injury rates in other sports like football, hockey and even boxing that are legal, it doesn’t make a difference. I really hope that MMA will pass legislation in Ontario, as it seems like others use them as a reference.

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