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FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2014

LOS ANGELES NEWS GROUP

| SPORTS

RONDA ROUSEY

Nickname: Rowdy Birthplace: Riverside Raised: Jamestown, N.D./Santa Monica Age: 27 Last fight: Defeated Sara McMann via TKO (knee) at 1:06 of the first round at UFC 170 at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on Feb. 22. Twitter: @RondaRousey Quote: Theres no ego between any of us. Whoever has a fight coming up, we are all like your slave, pretty much. ... Its not like its all about one person. Its all about whoevers got something coming up.

MARINA SHAFIR

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Nickname: The Supernova from Moldova Birthplace: Soroca, Moldova Raised: Albany, N.Y. Age: 26 Last fight: Defeated Chandra Engel via armbar submission at 1:57 of the first round at Chaos at the Casino 4 at Hollywood Park Casino in Inglewood on April 12. Twitter: @MarinaShafir Quote: I gotta tell you, its like the stars are aligning for us. Its great having them. ... I wouldnt take anybody out, I wouldnt put anybody in. This is perfect. This is great.

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MMA
FROM PAGE 7

Not because I wouldnt have loved to have that dream, but because it didnt exist. This was more than a year before the UFC and Spike TV launched The Ultimate Fighter, which is seen as the time MMA nally became part of the mainstream. But that was for men. Baszler continued to toil in more than a dozen organizations. A certied EMT, Baszler often worked two jobs to support herself, in addition to training and ghting. She won belts for promotions long gone by now. While the UFC was starting its womens division with Rousey as its champion, Baszler went 1-2 in less than a year in Invicta Fighting Championships before being selected to compete on The Ultimate Fighter. She was regarded as the favorite, only to be upset by Julianna Pena in the shows rst ght. The disappointment eventually ebbed when she knew she would get a shot at ghting for a UFC contract. An ankle injury stalled that long-awaited debut, but Baszler got a taste for it when she cornered Duke for her UFC debut in November. Months later, she still gets goosebumps recounting it. Finally, to hear the music and be in the arena, it was a surreal moment, she said. It was crazy. It was awesome. Her time would come. The date was circled: April 16, 2014, vs. Sarah Kaufman on the TUF Nations nale in Quebec. But in training, Baszler threw out her hip, which led to her throwing out her back, which led to discs swelling and worse. She was bedridden for three days. She didnt train effectively for 2 weeks. Knowing Baszler wasnt 100 percent and a loss could cost her a spot in the UFC, Tarverdyan, along with Baszler mentor and UFC heavyweight Josh Barnett, made the difficult call. The ght was off. Ohhh ... heartbroken. Heartbroken, Shafir said of everyones reaction to the news. Because aside from all the training, mental preparation is such a big part of that. So when you dont really ll that mental void in your brain that, OK, Im ghting, and you pull away? Its such a tease. I could only imagine. Baszler holed up in her room for two days, depressed and questioning her future in the sport. Baszler knows this: Her coaches made the right call. And a UFC ght is still coming her way. But she also knows, at 33, more sand is on the wrong side of the hourglass of her career. Ultimately, I need to have a ght, to put the stamp at the end of the book. I started at the fairgrounds in an expo building where there was nowhere to sit, just paid money at the door and stood around and signed up at the door to ght. They didnt even have

Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir use the Santa Monica Stairs for a workout. The women push and encourage each other during training, especially if one of them has an upcoming fight.

weigh-ins, she said. To start from that, to see the growth happen and nally fight in the UFC, the pinnacle of what our sport is, I need to have that. The one ght that could happen some day might be the biggest shocker of all. Rousey vs. Baszler. Horsewoman vs. Horsewoman. Not only do they laugh about it, they have the routines, weigh-in staredowns and trash-talking down to a tee. Its not that much different. We come in here, we beat each other up, then were all, Lets go! Rousey said. Yeah, whenever and if ever we do ght for the belt, itll just be like were gonna throw down. And afterward, buffalo wings on me. Whatever happens. Finally for Baszler, a dream worth having.

Anticipation
When Baszler lost her bout on The Ultimate Fighter, the biggest winner outside of Pena might have been Duke.

While the Kentucky native also lost her rst ght via unanimous decision in an all-out brawl with Raquel Pennington, she gained a mentor. I kinda took her under my wing, Baszler said. I called her my Sith apprentice, shes my little padawan. Im really excited to see the growth of her happen. Duke has been fighting professionally since 2012 and began her amateur career in 2010. But the progress she sees and feels in herself has spawned condence. A lot of that comes not only from training with world-class female ghters, but also in learning from the champ. We get to spar with Ronda, we get to train with Ronda, Duke said with a smile, almost incredulous at hearing what she is saying. If you think about it, we get to work with the best female ghter on the planet on a daily basis, Thats only gonna make us better. And that makes her better too. It

pushes her more, makes her have to grow more. Duke showed off what she had absorbed in a few short months with her overwhelming unanimous-decision victory over Peggy Morgan in November. And shes had several more months since, leading up to her ght Saturday against Bethe Correia on the preliminary card of UFC 172 in Baltimore. Not only has Tarverdyan broken bad habits and built upon an already steady foundation, he has molded a ghter not unlike himself. Duke and Tarverdyan have the same tall, rangy build. At 5 foot 11, Duke towers over most of her 135-pound opponents, and Tarverdyan has tailored her skills as such. Dukes nickname might be The Gun, but Tarverdyan prefers to call her Cheepote, which stands for The Whip. Its like I get to get inside his head a little bit on what works for him and have the right attitude and try to emulate him, she said. I watch

him move a lot. I watch him spar a lot because he has a similar body type, He understands why some things work and some things dont, whats easy and whats not. I feel like he gets it. Its like someone understands that long, lanky ghter. Duke also understands what she has been afforded: to live and train with fellow ghters, all intelligent and uniquely skilled. And Baszler sees her friend and protege able to focus solely on training while not having to work two jobs, and she cant help but get a little jealous. If I could have had the opportunity to be a full-time ghter while I was one of the best in the world, what could I have done then? Baszler asks. Jess is at a great point in her career where she has that early enough that I think shes gonna do huge things.

Appreciation
At the top of the mountain resides Rousey. This is her faction, her

lair, her doing. And no one has secondguessed it for a second. Where else would I rather be? Im learning so much, Duke said. As for the makeup of the group, everyone brings something to the table. When asked how to dene everyone, Rousey puts it this way as only she can. Marina is like the levelheaded mommy, the reasonable one. And then I would say that Jessamyn is like the sweet, cuddly, alwaysin-a-good-mood one. Shes the one you randomly walk up to and hug in the house, she said. And then Shayna is our navigator of Reddit. We all just sit around the TV and watch Shayna surf Reddit and we laugh our asses off together. And shes denitely more like the showman of everybody. Shes very much the entertainer of the group. Rousey has deemed herself the slob of the bunch, dirty dishes and clothes in her wake. But shes also the king of the pride, defender of the lionesses. I feel like they do all the work and I just eat everything that they just bring and prepare for me, Rousey said. And if anyone messes with them, Ill rip off their face. And thats my job. The truth is, there is nothing Rousey requires or wants from them. Baszler says the depth of gratitude for Rousey is impossible to quantify. It cant be measured what shes done for us. You cant make a list of things shes bought or something like that, Baszler said. Its not a measurable thing. Its the opportunities shes given us. Shar sums up The Four Horsewomen as a beautiful thing that happened. Theyre my sisters. Theyre my teammates, she said. Id take a bullet for those girls.

Ronda Rousey, Shayna Baszler, Marina Shafir and Jessamyn Duke watch WWE Monday Night Raw at their Venice home.

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