A Windsor woman is celebrating her MMA win and is looking forward to her next bout.
Not only was it Randi Field's first professional win, but it was also her first bout in a pro matchup at the Prospect Fighting Championship.
"Just going in, I felt a lot of my nerves. If you watch my fight, I just kept taking a big breath," Field said in an interview with BlackburnNews.com. "A lot of times, you think to yourself, like, 'oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing this.' -- but then you get in there, and it's so much fun. The sportsmanship is so great. I just had a blast out there."
The bout was June 15 at the St. Denis Centre.
Fighting before a home town crowd has its distractions, but soon the fighter nicknamed "Ruthless" in the ring found her groove against Amanda Borg, a veteran of MMA fighting.
Randi Field during her first professional MMA win, June 15 2019. (Photo courtesy of Randi Field.
"She was tough. She hit me with a couple of clean hits. It wasn't what I was expecting," remembered Field. "You kinda take a couple of minutes to feel them out and adapt to what they're doing, and then it was at one point in the fight I just turned on."
Field had her first amateur Mixed Martial Arts bout in 2015. Before her training, the 29-year-old single mother of a seven-year-old daughter said she was in a dark place.
"I was going down the wrong path. I was partying, drinking, doing other things -- I didn't have any goals," she explained. "I didn't have a job. I wasn't really doing anything."
It was her father, Greg Field, who first brought her to the gym.
"I starting doing the classes and I fell in love with it," said Field. "I had a lot of anger. I would say I had a lot of resentment. There's not too many things that can get me going anymore."
Field teaches an MMA fitness class and recommends the sport to other women.
"You're surrounded by people who are hardworking, very positive. You set a goal in life, and you just achieve it," she said.
Her daughter is quick to express her pride in her mother but asked if how she would feel about her daughter one day entering the ring; Field is enthusiastic.
"She has actually been mentioning a lot lately that she wants to start, and if this is something she would want to do, I would absolutely support it," she insisted. "I see what it did for me. It kept me focused. I'm hoping that she'll have that same type of focus, and go after everything that she wants."
The next bout for Field is a few months away, another Prospect Fighting Championship event in London this September, but she hopes to fight again in Windsor this December.