How Michelle Waterson Started in MMA | Joe Rogan

Are you from a military background? My dad, yeah. My dad was... So that's when my parents met. My dad was stationed in Germany. Oh. My mom was fleeing Thailand to... Her first husband was like physically abusive to her. So she was leaving Thailand. And she came to Germany to find her a GI. And then found my dad. She came to find a GI specifically? Well, you know, I think she was coming to get away. But she wanted a better life for her son at the time. And my dad was in the hospital. And so my mom was taking care of him and cooking him food and made him fall in love. There you go. And my dad always jokes. He tells us a story all the time. He's like, yeah, your mom was taking care of me. And then she told me that you were pregnant. And then 12 months later, you were born. Oh, that's funny. But now they fell in love. It was just a really long pregnancy. Just weird. Just kind of weird. I don't know why. Yeah, it's just like 12 months. I don't know. But I was pretty small. But no, yeah. And then so then we moved to Colorado. And I was born. Then we lived in Germany for a little bit when I was younger. And then back to Colorado. And I grew up in Aurora, Colorado. Oh, cool. When did you start training? Probably around 10. Yeah. Yeah. Around 10. I have an older brother. He's four years older than me. He's my half brother. And I really wanted to do gymnastics as a kid. And my parents just couldn't afford it. It was really expensive. And so my brother found a little karate spot at the church just across the street. And it was a community, like a community karate thing. And so it was something that all three of us could do. And so, yeah, we jumped into it. And I fell in love with it. It just took over my life and changed my life. Did you start competing really quickly? Yeah, I think so. And at first, it's funny because at first, so I would do the karate tournaments. And so there's points sparring. And then there's the katas. And I thought the katas were silly. And I remember going in and doing points sparring and getting knocked on my butt. And I was like, OK, I think I want to do some katas then. I want to bring some trophies home. But so, yeah, I competed karate from 10 all the way up until I was 18. And so I did a lot of the flashy extreme martial arts katas with the flips and stuff like that. But I always came back to sparring because I wasn't good at it. I was like, it bugged me. It bugged me that I wasn't good at it. And then I found my niche because it's points sparring. So you get two points to the head for kicks to the head. So I would just sit back and let them come in and just kick them in the head. Keep my head a couple times and win the fight. So how did you go from that to kick boxing? Or did you go right into MMA? When did you just start training MMA? So I did karate. And then I got my black belt in karate. What kind? American freestyle. And then so I think around 18 or 19, I was kind of just exploring doing a couple different things. So I did wushu for a couple of years. And I competed in wushu. And then I did a little bit of campo. And then kind of dabbled a little bit into kick boxing. And so it all kind of just happened pretty strangely. I was in college. I was working at Hooters. And I was doing all these little side jobs, doing photo shoots for this and that. And I was a ring girl for an MMA show. I had never seen MMA. And I remember just walking around the cage and thinking, man, I want to be on the inside. That looks cool. I think I could do it because it was mixed martial arts. And I remember talking to a promoter. And he kind of laughed me off and was just like, whatever. You're a ring girl. And it was a smaller local show. Donald Soroni was actually fighting on that show. And he overheard me. And so he came to my work at Hooters. And I wasn't there. And he was just like, left me no serious about fighting. Get your ass in the gym. Wow. And then. And where was this? Is it in Colorado? In Colorado. And then so I went to go train. I went to go train with Donald. And we gym hopped from place to place. I trained with Dwayne. I trained with Trevor. I trained with all the guys. Wow. And so I took a couple smokers. We'd drive around the region and took a couple smokers. And then it was like at that point when I was still in college. And I just was not happy in college. I was kind of wandering around aimlessly. I was really successful in high school. And it just didn't transfer over to college. I still got good grades. I was 3.8. I was going to DU. But I wasn't happy. There was something missing. And it was the martial arts. It was a big part of my life. You needed a real challenge. You need something physical too probably, right? I would imagine that someone growing up, doing martial arts as long as you did, the thrill of using your body and moving around, it's so important. Once you do that and you compete and it becomes a part of you, the idea of sitting in the classroom all day and then eventually sitting in a job all day was probably not that compelling. Yeah, I think so. I think that I just was losing myself. What were you going to school for? I was going to school. So I was double majoring in theater and sports science. So I was majoring in theater because I got a scholarship for it and I was doing sports science. I wanted to be like physical therapist for like a sports team or something like that, or even a martial arts team. But yeah, so I decided to take a little bit, like a break from that. And my mom, my grandma was sick in Thailand. So then I was like, I told my mom, I just go with her for the summer. And I went to visit my grandma in Thailand. And while I was out there, I went to Sityatung Muay Thai Camp. And I absolutely fell in love with it. They made fun of me because of my karate kicks. Yeah, it's interesting how different karate kicks are than the Thai kicks. Yeah, and they were looking at me like I was crazy, but I was like, but no, I'm a black belt. I know what I'm doing. They're just laughing at me. We're training on concrete outside. These little five year old kids are doing 10 year old 10 minute rounds and my feet are blistering up from kicking over and over and over on the concrete. But I loved it. I fell in love with it. It kicked my butt and I fell in love with it. And I came back and I dropped out of college and I decided to pursue fighting. Wow. So where did you learn grappling? So my first MMA fight was kind of just, it was supposed to be an amateur fight. And like I said, it was training with Donald and he was training at a school in Vail. And so I would go to, I would work on the weekends and then drive up to Vail and train my grappling and all of it, like all of the MMA. And so. So you basically trained MMA together. Like you didn't take specific grappling classes, but would imagine that that was the thing that you needed to concentrate on the most, right? Yeah, and I figured, okay, my pro did, or it wasn't, it was supposed to be amateur, but the girl that I was supposed to fight fell through. And the only girl that they had available was already pro. She was like two and no pro. And of course, you know how Donald is. He's like, whatever, fuck it, just do it. And so. That's a good Donald accent. So I was like, all right, I mean, we've been training. So I literally had four weeks. In my, like throughout my karate career, we would have grappling nights when we would do grappling, but it wasn't anything like substantial. So yeah, four weeks of grappling training. And I figured, okay, you know, I'll just use my standup to win the fight. And she was swinging from way back here and trying to take my head off. So I ended up taking her down. I ended up taking her down like six or seven times. And winning the fight by taking her down and ground and pounding. That's crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. Did you say while you were doing it, like, wow, this is so weird that I'm doing this. It was, I wasn't thinking at all. I was just in the moment, having the time of my life. Were you thinking that this was what you were gonna wind up doing, like professionally? Or were you just thinking, I can't believe I'm doing this? Yeah, that's exactly what I was like, this is so much fun. It was at the Brimfield Events Center. I don't know if that's still called the Brimfield Events Center in Colorado, but. Yeah, I think a bank owns it now or something. They always change names. It was so much fun. But never in my life I thought I would be. A top UFC contender. Never. And on your way, your goal is to be the first mommy to ever win a title. Yeah. That's possible. 100%. You're in the hunt right now. Like, what are you ranked? I'm ranked seven. Seventh, but I don't think the rankings are anything. They're weird. They're weird. Yeah, there's like sometimes someone will beat somebody and then that person's still ahead of him in the ranking. I'm like, explain that. I just, I don't understand the rankings though. I feel like I've won my last three fights and I've gone down in rankings. What? Yawana hasn't fought and she's gone down in rankings. And some of the girls haven't fought and they've gone up in rankings. I just think the rankings are crazy.