In a lot of ways, Ashley Yoder’s path into MMA was not a typical one. She didn’t come from a traditional martial arts background in wrestling, karate, or jiu-jitsu. She wasn’t the type who took kickboxing classes on the side while she was growing up. Instead, she was a cheerleader and ran track through high school.
She also wasn’t one of the ones who found MMA due to boredom or needing another outlet to compete after giving up another sport. In fact, she was overloaded when she was in college.
One of the hardest things for me was that I was a full time college student with two jobs, said Yoder to The Top Turtle MMA Podcast. I was in school, I was working for the prosecutor, but I was a criminal justice and history major at Indiana University. I was also bartending two full-time jobs and taking 18 credit hours.
All the while this was going on, she started fighting as an amateur with little to no training.
I wasn’t really sleeping. I actually didn’t really train to fight as an amateur, Yoder admits. I just kind of did it for anger management.
Still, it wasn’t the rush of competing or seeing an opponent’s blood that kept her in the cage. It wasn’t even the levels of success she was having as an amateur. Instead, it was fear – but not the kind of fear you might expect it to be.
After I worked for the prosecutor, my senior year of college, I did not want to go to law school. I didn’t know how to get out of telling my dad that, she said. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I had a lot of student loans and debt. It was already hard to tell my dad ‘hey, I’m moving to California to try to be a fighter
And that opportunity came in the form of a friend and fellow UFC veteran, who gave her the ticket away from law school.
One of my friends, Dave Herman – former UFC fighter, he wrestled at Indiana University, he was training and just moved to Team Quest. He said, ‘hey, you should come try it out.
So she jumped at the opportunity to take some time to reassess things. In that time, she began to take additional fights, eventually turning pro. Then came an opportunity to go on The Ultimate Fighter, which she again jumped at. Now, she finds herself fully immersed in fighting as a career.
Honestly, when I moved out here [to California], it was just something to do to kind of figure out what I wanted to do next, she said. It ended up taking a different path.
As for how her dad felt about the ultimate goal, he wasn’t necessarily into it at first, but seems to have come around.
My dad was not really keen to that idea, but we made it work, said Yoder.
Yoder looks to make it three straight wins inside the octagon this weekend when she faces Randa Markos at UFC on ESPN+ 20 at Singapore Indoor Stadium in Kallang, Singapore.
