Sara McMann: You can take big hits in life and still do great things

UFC bantamweight Sara McMann grew up poor. She told MMAJunkie‘s Ben Fowlkes she never went to a school dance, because that stuff cost money. In 1999 her brother was murdered, and in 2004 her fiance died in a car accident. She was driving.

McMann is also an Olympic silver medalist in wrestling and the #3 ranked women’s bantamweight challenger in the UFC. The tragedies in her life are compelling fodder for the media, but she is and remains a private person, feeling that talking about tragedy to promote a fight is ‘sleazy.’

McMann had the opportunity recently to talk to kids at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Larger than Delaware and Rhode Island, Pine Ridge is one of the poorest areas of the United States, with all the attendant drug use, alcoholism, and other social ills.

There she conducted free MMA seminars for the Rez Rumblers fight team, and also told her story freely at three different schools.

Truthfully, there’s things I revealed in those talks that the media doesn’t know about, said McMann. When I’m talking to these kids and revealing those intimate details of my life, it’s because I can look out in the crowd and see kids nodding their heads. They’ve been in some of those same situations. That feels like a more pure reason to talk about it, because I’m up there opening up, talking about some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to face, and talking about them publicly.

“But if I’m asked about those things and it’s to promote a fight, that feels more sleazy to me. It’s like I’m selling those intimate details of my life rather than giving them to people who can use them to help change their lives. There’s a different feeling for me. The intention is very important to me.

I think it helps that I’m not some person who’s had all the right things and done everything perfectly and I just trained really hard and things fell together. I mean, I’ve taken some hits in life. I know some of them have too. I even met some kids who were legally emancipated from their parents, living on their own, and they were still in high school. I felt like I could be a good example that you don’t have to have all the right things in life, all the doors already open for you, in order to do great things. In fact, I truly believe that a lot of people who do great things, many of them have come from harder backgrounds and took some of those hits in life.

Ask a fight fan their favorite Rocky quote, and it is probably the speech to his son in Rocky Balboa.

“It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody!”

Sara McMann tells a similar story, but it has the vast advantage of being as real as it gets.