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<h3><a href="/go=news.detail&gid=450491" target="_blank">
Zingano: Strong is the only option for us
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<a href="/go=news.detail&gid=450491" ><img class="photo" src="http://img.mixedmartialarts.com/method=get&rs=50&q=75&x=0&y=26&w=310&h=165&ro=0&s=cat-zingano-miesha-tate.jpg" /></a>
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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/tgerbasi" target="_blank">Thomas Gerbasi </a>recently profiled Cat Zingano for <a href="https://twitter.com/UFCmag" target="_blank">UFC: The Official Magazine</a>, ahead of her fight with UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey in the main event of UFC 184 on Saturday.</p>
The brilliant writer Joyce Carol Oates pointed out that you play sports, you don't play boxing, it is real. Mixed martial arts is as real as it gets, as Zingano testifies.
“To me this is all real, especially when I have a kid and can relate it to that,” said Zingano, the mother of an eight-year-old son named Brayden. “These fights are real; it’s not a sport to me. I don’t like going out there and dancing and timing and checking out what everybody else has got. I’m trying to finish them, and I’m trying to show myself that I’m indestructible. It’s very real to me. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s self-defense—me using these disciplines that I’ve learned to not be hurt by someone and to hurt them in return instead.”
In 18 months, Zingano lost a title shot and coaching slot on TUF 18, and her husband. Somehow that led to pre fight run up that was blissfully free of trash talk.
“Fortunately and unfortunately, we have a lot in common,” Zingano said. “We have a lot of mutual friends, we’re very intense athletes and we both fight from the heart and not for the sport. We also have some personal life things in common that really suck for both of us. I know that she lost her dad similarly to how I lost my husband, and that makes me look at her as a completely different human now. Knowing what I’m going through, knowing what I’m feeling, knowing the things that I see my son going through every day, I can see why she is the way she is, and I can see why she’s so strong and so tough. Because if any of those things affected her the way that they’re affecting me, you don’t know how strong you are until strong is the only option. I can see that in her, and that’s why I think this will be an epic fight.”
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