Q & A with amateur Muay Thai fighter Danielle Curtis
Danielle Curtis is preparing for her first Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight.
Danielle began training in Muay Thai in 2015, fitting her training in around studying at University of Canberra, working, and the rest of her life.
After a lengthy process to develop and find an opponent, she faces her first fight this Friday. I spoke with Danielle about her lead up to the fight and what it takes to compete in combat sports.
Q. How did you first become interested in Muay Thai?
A. I started watching the UFC, so MMA in general, and got super super into it, so that’s all I wanted to do and I was a poor uni student so I couldn’t start my mixed martial arts then. Towards the end of my uni I decided that I didn’t wanna start with everything all at once. I just wanted to find one discipline to work in for a little while before adding in the other elements and it just so happened that a Muay Thai gym opened up on campus at UC so I started training there.
Q. What does a training session involve for Muay Thai?
A. There’s a couple of different types of training sessions. So you have your strength and conditioning sessions. And then you usually have your technique type classes.
Q. What kind of skills do you think Muay Thai requires of you?
A. I think even though I can say being strong, being fast, aggression or endurance is a big one, I think it’s actually more mental than it is physical. With most combat sports in general the mental toughness is a much bigger element than the physical. So when you do something wrong or when you end up getting hit in the face when you’re sparring it’s getting over that and realising that it’s not win or lose it’s win or learn.
Q. What’s been the hardest part of preparation for your fight?
Definitely the weight cut, having quite a strict diet. Right now, being only five days out my diet has just changed to being even more strict. But before that it was no sugar except for natural sugar. No simple carbs, only complex carbs. It just involves a lot of discipline. You’ve got to mentally be like No, I can’t drink at a party or no, I can’t have cake at someone’s engagement party. A lot of discipline basically is the hardest bit.
A. Do you think being a female makes it harder to compete in sports like Muay Thai?
A. Yes and no. It’s harder to get your foot in the door because it’s a predominately young sport compared to things like boxing or tennis or something like that. Mixed Martial Arts is definitely a very young sport but in saying that it’s got probably the best fairness across the board. So in MMA it hasn’t been around for very long but there’s constantly fight cards that are being headlined by women. Their cards are having more pay-per-views than some of the men’s.
Q. Do you have any doubts or worries for your upcoming fight
A. Not really. I think that’s one thing with combat sports that’s different to any other sport. Most people that I know within the combat world, when they’re competing there is no second thoughts. You don’t second guess yourself, your game plan or anything like that because that might lead to fault or a hesitation in the ring.
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