Rumor Has It
I’m thinking, “Why won’t you just go down, Sheba? Why won’t you just go down? I’ve earned this victory and there’s no way you can beat me… but you just have to be Sheba.”
I throw a combination to her head, but she gets her arms up. I could just keep on wailing on her because I’m not going to get tired, but this is Sheba, hardheaded Sheba. I throw three right hands to her stomach and she’s fighting hard not to fold over. I look at the ref and he doesn’t match my stare.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I yell, “She isn’t doing jack shit, man! This fight is over!”
“Fuck you, bitch!!” somebody in the crowd yells
“Booooooo!!! Come on, Sheba!! We believe in you!!”
It just makes me angrier. How can they turn on me? Do they know how much I gave for my country? For them? I throw the hardest right hand I can muster, but she’s not there… she ducked it and she drives a right hand into my stomach, just above my navel… Uggghhh… I go down on my hands and knees and the crowd cheers are deafening. She’s still got it, humph… the punch knocked the wind out of me, but I get to my feet anyway as the “Sheba” chant picks up and the drums beat louder and louder. She charges in and I stick my knee out and catch her right below her breasts and hear an “Uhhh!!” from her, then an “Unnhh!!” as I hit her with a left hook. She’s cut… in all her career, I don’t think Sheba’s been cut ten times, but I just cut her and my blood is pumping as I follow up with a left to her cat’s eye shaped navel and back the mocha-skinned icon up to the ropes. Go down, Sheba. You aren’t going to win this one, so just go the fuck down.
“Is that all you got?” she says, huffing and puffing
“No,” I say and I fire knee hard knees into her stomach and watch her fight the urge to vomit, “Don’t get blood on my shorts. On second thought, do get blood on them. I could get a lot of money for them on eBay.”
I hit her with a jab and her head snaps way back… I mean WAY back. I drive a knuckler to her navel and she folds over my fist. I drop an elbow to the back of her neck and she goes down, but pops back up. She’s against the ropes and her arms are up and her mouth is open and I just decide to end it. I throw so many punches at her head; I don’t know how many, but it’s the angry drill I do in training… hammering the back and ending fully spent. I feel her nose break and her jaw shatter. I see her mouthpiece chip and her eyes go vacant. That’s when the referee finally stops the fight and I drop to my knees, smiling and celebrating, but I’m being booed and they’re throwing stuff. I’m from here too… but I guess I’m not what Sheba is to these people. I just beat a legend and this is how I’m treated… whatever.
People say a lot of things about me. They say I’m cocky; they say I have a really big mouth; they say I’m hotheaded and they want to see me lose. But two things they can’t ever say about me: They can’t say I don’t work hard and they can’t say that I didn’t earn my medals. I guess if you’ve got to start somewhere, it’s got to start with me sitting on my bed as a mid-teenager watching Kayla Rankin on television. I saw her 5’9” 140 lb body in that black bikini with those black boots, blowing a kiss right at the camera and I used to say to myself, “One day, that’s going to be me holding that OPW Championship, or that’s going to be me competing in the Olympics.”
See, I’m from Pretoria, South Africa and Kayla Rankin is my childhood hero. Yeah, I know she’s probably not even 30 yet, but I’m 18, and I got to watch her compete in several competitions as well as watch her runs in OPW, the EBL, and Abbyfights’ promotions. Kayla may not have been popular among the members of my strict religious family, but her sexiness, her sassiness, and her willingness to take on anyone drew me to her. I can’t say whether Kayla was the best fighter, then or now, but I know that she gives off the impression she is because she’ll always show up for her fights and competitions in shape and ready to go.
I can’t say the number of fights I’d gotten into at school, with nuns breaking us up and me in my schoolgirl’s uniform, my blackish brown hair’s ponytail undone and my blue eyes narrowed in anger. Girls would mouth off at me because I liked to paint my nails black or because I was a know it all and the class clown, that meant I was insecure to them… I’d think, “What would Kayla do?… Kayla would smack this bitch and kick her in the crotch, then strip her right in front of the nuns.” And that’s what I did. I spent a lot of time in the counselors office and some of the nuns thought I was possessed by the devil or something, but I was just doing what my favorite athlete would’ve done. Not to mention, my name… my name is Rumor Winfield. I’d even thought I was related to Kayla because she wrestled with the last name Winfield for a little while, but it was never confirmed. After all, I fantasized about her; you know, like those wrestling matches she’d have… I’d imagine if she was wrestling me and whether or not I could beat her.
I remember seeing her beat Jessika several times. We love Jessika here in South Africa; we cheered for her throughout her career, especially when she fought Laila Ali and she’s a hero for her service, but the biggest gift she gave her country was mentoring Kayla and getting her into the fighting world. At least that’s how I feel. Jessika may have been a far better fighter than Kayla, but her soft spot for her was evident. She went easy on Kayla and Kayla won most of the time. But the two weren’t just teacher and student, they were ex-lovers who still loved, but I’m not going to get into that. It’s confusing, especially when you bring Seka and Dawn into play. Seka is Jessika’s adopted daughter; Dawn is Seka’s girlfriend who is also Kayla’s younger sister. It’s a family affair, I guess. Then, Kayla’s got Marie B., who’s won more OPW titles than Kayla, as a lovesick lover and she’s got her official girlfriend, Heather. That’s something I love about Kayla; she’s loves ‘em and will leave ‘em, but she won’t trust or deceive ‘em either. I remember she beat Marie and won the OPW World Title from her in a Last Woman Standing match. I remember her title defenses against the crazy but accomplished Alicia Christmas and I remember when Kayla beat Samantha here in South Africa at the Jessika Hall of Fame Induction Show. I lived and died by what Kayla did in the ring and I patterned myself after her. I wanted to be as good as she is.
Because the sport of female fighting had gotten so popular around the world thanks to Rachel Apache’s run in the mid-90s of traveling the world and beating all the great male fighters who accepted her challenge and soundly beating the female ones too, female fighting became an Olympic event. Really, Rachel Apache’s estranged sister is to thank for this more so than Rachel; Jasmine isn’t just in the Guinness Book of World Records for having more combined title reigns than any fighter in history (69), she is also in the UN and pushed hard through her UN friends to get the Olympic committee’s approval for this event. Of course, you’ve got it broken down; there’s Freestyle Fighting, Team Fighting, Submission Only, and a bunch of weight classes to go along with it. I had grown right even with Kayla at 5’9” 140 lbs and I trained like a decathlete after reading her interview in Muscle Fitness Magazine. Every exercise she did, I did ten more reps of it because I knew that she had started much earlier than I had and I needed to catch up. I entered the amateurs here in Pretoria, traveled to Johannesburg and Cape Town, I won 16 straight matches and forgot all about college. My striking was outstanding and I had a dry mud field in my backyard that I’d bring in girls and practice my wrestling. Most of the time, we’d go at it nude. If you want to know who I look like, it’s Hope Solo, the goalie for the United States Women’s Soccer team. It’s ironic because she’s known for being cocky and questioning authority.
Hope Solo
My ranking was climbing in South Africa, and it seemed like I would definitely be on the Olympic Team Fighting Team. Let me explain. You’ve got the individual competitions where each country sends one participant for each weight class. You’ve got the Open Weight competition where weight doesn’t matter. And then, you’ve got Team Fighting, where you’ve got two teams of six girls competing and weight doesn’t matter; match conditions do. So, you’ll have two girls fighting in the first fall and it may be win by pin and fall two may be win by submission. It’s win four out of seven matches; if the seventh match was necessary, each team would pick a fighter to represent them for the gold, regardless of weight. I was hoping to get picked for all of them. The coach was a gray haired woman who’s a legend in the sport from Cape Town named Joanne Luckett. I’d heard of her battles in the 1940s and she looked me over and barely said a word to me. It didn’t piss me off that much, but we’d sit around and do nothing. She had no sense of organization and she wasn’t creative; she just bragged about the success she’d had in her fighting career and talked about Sheba The Great. I’d want to train elsewhere, like in my gym or my backyard and we’d have arguments about it. And I really didn’t see what the hell the problem was; it’s not like me training where I felt more productive was going to hurt the team. If I wanted to hurt the team, I’d sit on my ass and play with myself, drinking Coca Cola and eating wing dings all day and night. Then Sheba showed up and the controversy really picked up.
Sheba The Great may be South Africa’s most well-known female fighter before Kayla came along. Sheba was 5’3” 126 lbs, with mocha skin and long black hair and she was an extremely aggressive muay thai fighter who won a ton of titles and was the hero of the country during a time of racial oppression. She fought and beat Destiny Brown in their first fight, and anyone who knows female fighting knows that Destiny Brown is considered by many people to be the greatest female fighter of all time (Destiny is a subject in my story “The Last Queen and the First Lady”). Rachel Apache may just be what the television group says, but Destiny was kicking ass and taking names way before Rachel was even born. Destiny beat Sheba twice after that and those were three of the most violent, bloody fights I’d ever watched. When Sheba fought, the drums would beat and those drums would motivate her; no matter how badly beaten she was, when those drums started pounding, she was back to life, charging forward and driving home those hooks and knees. Siena Blaze was fresh out of jail and came here to avoid a court date, lost some weight and fought Sheba in the heat and Sheba kicked her ass, but was robbed when Siena knocked her down and the referee stopped the fight with :04 left when Sheba got up. Siena got to leave South Africa with her title belts and with Sheba’s and the referee flew the coop as well. But she came back and beat Sheba years later, well after Sheba was damaged goods from all the beatings she had taken and after she’d had her fourth child.
I had already been in the papers for feuding with Joanne about the training arrangements. Some of the papers agreed with me and some said I was being a loner. And that was another thing; she made this big issue about me not calling her “Coach Luckett.” I told the papers that if Joanne wanted to be called Coach, she should be a Coach. They said I was cocky and saying that I was like Kayla without the class. It hurt; it really did, but I didn’t let them see it. One thing about me, if I have an opinion, I’m going to give it and I’m not going to let anyone stop me. They could call me whatever they wanted to; Joanne wasn’t a coach so I wasn’t calling her one. The Olympics were coming up and everyone was in a buzz because Sheba, now in her forties but still looking young and in shape, was going to be on our team. I thought that she was just going to be a coach or on there as an honorary member, but what came next surprised me.
Mary Jane Simmons, who was a Black American fighter with light brown skin, dimples, hazel eyes and a great body, was beating everyone. Mary Jane was a nice girl; she was really friendly to everyone, so I tried to stay away from her because I didn’t want to have sympathy on her if we should have to fight. She had been picked for the open weight competition by the USA and the individual and team competitions as well. Sheba had been trying to cut weight all day because she was going to be in the 121 lb Freestyle Fighting events, and this weight group had a deep field, including the UK’s “Dynamite” Diana Quinn, the US’s “Blonde Ambition” Aubrey Harris, and Puerto Rico’s “Lil” Moe Hernandez. But Sheba couldn’t make weight in the time given and her spot went to Denmark’s Sophie Anders, who was quickly beaten by Aubrey. Dynamite Quinn ended up beating Moe and winning the Gold Medal (see my story “The Mighty Quinn” for more on Dynamite)
It was time for the individuals and to say I was undefeated and eager, Joanne replaced me with another fighter named Lungile Tucker who I had knocked out in an amateur match back home. Joanne said she needed me for the team fights because we would be facing the United States, and they had a star-studded team as always. A Brazilian Jiu Jitsu phenom, or so they called her, named Joyce Gracie ended up winning the Gold Medal in my weight division. She barely threw any strikes at all; it was all about taking you down and slapping on a choke, armbar, or leglock and making you quit. She was about 5’10” 140 lbs, with long dark brown hair and light brown eyes and she looked like her fellow BJJ relative Kyra Gracie. The Gracie family was said to have created BJJ and I know my submissions, but I knew I was far more well rounded a fighter than that bitch. And why am I calling her a bitch? Well, in her interviews and in the interactions she had with the other fighters, she came off as a pompous, self-absorbed elitist who couldn’t stop talking about how Gracie Jiu Jitsu is the greatest style of fighting in the world. That really pissed me off because I knew if I had been in against her, I would’ve shut her big mouth up. I got in the camera before our team match against the US and let everyone know how I felt.
“Joyce Gracie is walking around back there like she’s Michael fucking Jackson. She thinks she’s the star of the fucking show. Fuck that bitch! Just because you come from a family of fighters doesn’t make you one. And if Joanne hadn’t benched me because she doesn’t like me, you can best believe I’d be the one with the Gold Medal around my neck, not that egotistical bitch.”
Kyra Gracie
Needless to say, my comments weren’t well received and when Joyce was asked about what I said, she just laughed and said:
“If Rumor Winfield was as good as she says she is, she would have competed. Apparently, she isn’t that good, haha. Gracie Jiu Jitsu is the greatest form of fighting; it has taken down many and inspired many more. What I am saying is truth, not hype.”
I wanted to break her nose. This anger fueled me in my match with the United States Jean Austin. Typical blonde fighter at 140 lbs, trying to stick and move, which was really dumb because I’d heard she had a background in wrestling. I walked her down and hammered her arms and ribs. She seemed uninterested in going to the ground with me so I slammed knees into her stomach over and over and over again. I could hear this bleach blonde bitch crying from behind her raised arms and I just punched her lower and lower to her belly… what would Kayla do (tee hee)? Finally, her arms came down and I broke her jaw with a left hook and drove the last fight out of her with a straight right that hit her right on her oval shaped navel. I stood over her and dared her to get up and she didn’t, so I went down on top of her, locked her in an arm triangle and she tapped out. But the story was that Jean Austin from Beaumont, Texas wrestled Rumor Winfield with a broken jaw and gave a very valiant effort. Bullshit.
Then the unthinkable happened… well, it was only unthinkable if you still were living in the past. Little blonde fighter Debbie McBride beat Sheba The Great. Sheba was in shape, but she was passed her prime and her reflexes weren’t what they used to be. Debbie kneed her in the stomach and kept attacking, once she realized Sheba wasn’t going to do anything but stand there and couldn’t counter because she was hurt. Debbie took Sheba down and everyone was shocked that Sheba couldn’t beat this little girl, but Sheba was out of gas. They stopped the fight. We ended up in a 3-3 tie with the US and a final fight would decide who would advance to face the Brazilian team for the Gold.
Like I said, in the deciding match, each coach picks a fighter, regardless of weight to represent the team. Now, I had barely broken a sweat in my fight and I knew the USA was going to pick the 5’7” 147 lb Mary Jane Simmons because she hadn’t faced any difficulties either, winning a gold medal in her individual weight. But do you think Joanne picked me? She said, “I think Sheba, for everything that she’s done for our country, deserves another shot. I know that Sheba can do it.” I don’t have anything against Sheba The Great, but her own facial expression told the story. Even she knew she couldn’t win and I saw her go to Joanne and ask her to pick me. But Joanne refused and Sheba went ahead and tried to summon the echoes of the past to beat Mary Jane. The fight lasted a little under three minutes. Mary Jane’s combinations and the “chop chop chop chop” sound she made when she was throwing them were simply too, too much for Sheba. The young Sheba would’ve punched circles around Mary Jane and Debbie McBride, but this wasn’t that Sheba. The US beat us 4-3 and went on to lose 4-2 to Brazil and while we beat China 4-0 to win the Bronze, I got to listen to Joyce Gracie’s mouth again as she collected another gold medal. Of course, I put my two cents in.
“There is no way I shouldn’t have been picked for the last fight against Mary Jane. There is no way I would’ve lost to her; I think people need to stop living in the past. This isn’t 1992 anymore; you’ve got to move on and we’re not doing that and that’s why we keep losing. That’s not poor coaching; that’s not coaching at all. I am absolutely fucking pissed off at this result. I busted my ass; the other girls on this team busted their asses and this is just ridiculous the way these old timers come along and think they can run with the young lionesses.”
I want to make something totally clear; I was not talking about Sheba. I was talking about Joanne. But people took it the way they wanted to and I was seen as being disrespectful to South Africa’s legendary fighter. What was going on was flat out wrong and with the Open Weight competition about to start and Mary Jane Simmons and Joyce Gracie both participating, I was ready to represent South Africa. At this point, I wasn’t speaking to Joanne; I just wasn’t. I had gone to the commission myself and had them put me in as South Africa’s representative and I told them Joanne had approved it. In fact, that was the second and last time I called her “Coach Luckett.” The first time being when I first met her and didn’t know how much of a piece of shit she was. My first opponent was a 6’ blonde named Opal Gage from Norway… knocked her out inside a minute. That put me in the semis against Mary Jane while Joyce Gracie was matched up against Argentina’s Conchita Santos. I watched Joyce choke out Conchita pretty easily because the Conchita was a brawler with a lot of power, but didn’t do diddly squat on the ground.
I stood toe to toe with Mary Jane and we stared into each other’s eyes while getting the instructions. She was thick, very fine light skinned Black girl, but I could tell this was going to last as long as I wanted it to. When that buzzer sounded, I charged out and she charged out and I nailed her with a hard left hook that knocked sweat off her head and made her go “Ooh!” That told me something about her; she wasn’t expecting it and she was nervous. I fired a right cross that she avoided and she instantly grabbed me and started hitting my right side with lefts. The punches hurt like hell, but I shook her jaw with an elbow and as I was turning to face her, I hurt her with a hook to her liver. She backed up… good. Mary Jane likes to dictate the action in her fights and she was giving me the center of the circle. I got her with a jab to her nose and a kick to her right leg. She winced when the kick landed and I stepped in and she raised her arms… good. I knew that Mary Jane loved to throw a counter straight right hand to set up her left hooks and uppercuts and her takedowns. She wasn’t throwing it and that told me she was still bit hurt and shellshocked at how aggressively I’d come out.
The inspiration for Mary Jane Simmons, the outstanding female boxer, Mary Jo Sanders.
I peppered her ribs with a combination and I was trying to get to her stomach, but she was turning with my punches and not letting me get to it. Mary Jane has a big butt and her shorts were above her navel. I could tell that despite the definition in her upper abs, she was soft lower down in the tummy area. She got me with a left hook to my side and I yelped and took a step back and then, she cracked me with a left hook to the jaw and a straight right that hit the bridge of my nose and staggered me. I almost went down and I smiled at her. She moved in and caught me with another straight right, just as I was getting ready to throw a front kick at her stomach. I brought my arms up and she landed two uppercuts to my arms, a left hook behind my right ear and another right to my stomach. She was making those “chop chop chop chop” noises and her punches were hurting me too much for me to laugh at her vocal expressions. I grabbed her around the waist and tried to take her down. I got her shorts down lower and I saw that softness in the stomach with a big cat’s eye shaped navel, but she wouldn’t go down. She was strong, so I just drove her back and we ended up outside of the circle. The ref broke us up and when MJ looked at me, I was nodding my head up and down.
“I’m here, bitch,” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
I could see it in her face; she was a sportswoman and she was a lady and she was a really good fighter, but she was tentative about me. As soon as the ref started it up again, I hit her with a jab to her nose and threw a hard head kick that she managed to block. She was backing up and I could tell that she was having a hard time figuring me out. She stuck a jab at me and I avoided it and she shot in to take me down or go for a slam… but I had a slam of my own. I slammed my knee into her stomach and as I heard her go “uhhhhh,” I hooked her a judo threw her on her back. I mounted her, but she got her arms around mine and locked me up. No problem, she was definitely strong, but she was hurt and I just started head butting her face and I knew she was going to let go of my arms and cover her face, which she did. Once that happened, I started pounding her face and arms with punches. I even dry humped her (What would Kayla do, right?)
She rolled over onto her stomach and powered to her hands and knees. I was temporarily riding her back, then she rolled forward and I was on my ass and she was getting to her feet. Once again, she was cautious and I was moving in on her. This time, I faked a left hook to her nose and landed a straight right to her stomach. I saw her cheeks fill with air and her body jerk a bit. Her eyes gave a painful look right back at mine and I smiled and hit her with a kick to her right leg. She was putting much of her weight on her left leg, her lead leg and with the right one hurting, she was going to really be leaning into my punches. And I rammed another right into her stomach. I learned that punch by watching Kayla after Abby took her under his wing. Kayla was never much of a body puncher, but Abby taught her a killer right hand to the stomach and when MJ made that “ummm” noise and dropped her arms, I dropped her with a right cross to her jaw. She banged her head hard on the mat, but she got up before I could jump on her. I should’ve been quicker, but just like some batters like to watch the ball go over the wall when they hit a homerun in American baseball, I like to watch a hyped up girl hit the deck from one of my punches, kicks, or knees.
Mary Jane was looking at her trainers and I could see a lack of confidence on her face. She’d never been pushed like this, never been dominated like this. She was losing and she was hurting and she knew it and I knew it. I knew that MJ had heart; I knew she had never lost a fight and she had dug deep and pulled out victories before against stiff opposition. I’ll never take that away from her; she didn’t get to this point fighting nobodies. So, I knew I had to jump on her, but do it cautiously. I kept a smile on my lips but hate in my eyes and I stalked her as she circled me and looked for an opening. I threw two more kicks to her right leg and she was definitely feeling the pain now. I got her in the right eye with a left hook and when she raised her arms, I moved in and put her in a muay thai clinch, then drove two knees to her stomach and one to her left side, but she pulled her head out and backpedaled when I tried to knee her face. I threw a haymaker right hand that she ducked under and just like that, she wrapped her arms around my waist and slammed me hard on my back.
I knew MJ was strong, but I knew I was winning the fight physically and psychologically. I hooked her head before she could get a full mount and I wrapped my legs around her waist and squeezed… modified guillotine choke. I held her in place, knowing that she could move me all over the mat. My power is for real, okay? Once I’ve got you down in one of my submissions, you’re probably not getting back up and I made sure that my choke was on tight and getting tighter. I even bit my lip, I was squeezing her so much and I was doing it with one arm. My left was hammering her right side and trying to torment her liver. She wasn’t tapping out, but the ref was looking closely. Once she was out, he pulled me off of her. I stood up and made a gesture like I was dusting myself off. I just beat an Olympic Gold Medalist, a national champion, the most hyped fighter here and well-deserved too. She was in tears and she had her mouth open and a dead look in her eyes once she came too and knew she was beaten. But we did hug and she wished me luck. I could have sympathy for her now; she’s a really nice person. But beating her and looking at somebody that strong and popular just turned me on. I was ready for the main course… Joyce Gracie.
“Joyce is going to have to put her skills where her mouth is, because so far, she’s only been putting her foot where her mouth is. And you know, I just may take her foot and stick it in her mouth. The bitch can’t stop running her mouth and I’m about to close it for good. Did you see what I just did? I just choked out the best Amateur fighter in the USA. Joyce will be a piece of cake for me.”
But of course, Joyce had to get her two cents in before our match…
“A rumor isn’t a rumor unless it ends… and that Rumor is about to end. She has no respect for me, my family, or my discipline. But none of that is going to help her in the circle, ha ha. I am looking forward to giving her a personal lesson in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.”
The bitch thought it was funny. She really thought it was funny. I knew I was going to have to make an example out of this bitch and when we faced each other, me with my black lycra top and lycra shorts with wrestling boots and her, with her black sports bra and purple gi bottoms with bare feet… I stared at that bitch and hissed. I was the viper ready to strike.
“Ooookay,” was her response with a smile and rolling her eyes. We backed up and the buzzer sounded.
To Be Continued…
