Sybil Starr won her debut match at hooknshoot on Saturday night in Evansville, Indiana, defeating Melissa Vasquez via a triangle choke about 3 minutes into the first round in the 125 pound weight class. Congrats to Sybil for a well deserved victory.
You can check out Sybil's other types of fighting at http:www.sybilstarr.com and http:www.lethalfemales.com
You should congratulate Sybil at her group. She does not ordinarily read any of the message boards, but relies on me to keep her informed. Her Yahoo group is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sybilstarrgroup/
Sybil loved doing her MMA match and intends to do another one, but probably not until next year sometime. It is difficult to find opponents in your weight class of comparatively equal ability.
Unfortunately, there is no video of the fights that night. Hooknshoot has rights to the video, but I do not believe there are plans to release it commercially. MSNBC is doing a three part series on female MMA and may show snippets of some of the matches.
Sybil has an account of the day of the match, with pictures on her blog, which can be found at: http://sybilstarr.blogspot.com/. Just scroll down to the entry for November 28, 2006.
I have copied and pasted Sybil's account of the match here below:
My opponent's name was Melissa Vasquaz. . a young woman from Fort Wayne, IN. She did not make weight. . . . at least not when I was there. . . they said she did eventually. . but it didn't matter to me, I am used to fighting people much bigger than I am. . .and I already felt like a winner just for being there. . . I had the opportunity to try myself in a ring in a form of fighting I train in but have never actually had a match in. I had faced my fears and met my goals just by Showing up. My only plan was to do my very best, and to let God bless the rest. . . wow. . it was all so crazy and cool and wonderful. . and the girls were awesome too!
The next day I headed to the gym with mike Krazz and my friends for some last minute training and to burn off some of my nervous energy. . we worked out for about two hours. .grabbed a light bite to eat and headed over to the venue for the fight. We still needed to do physicals and interviews. And then Lia braided my hair back. . and well, it was almost time. I went back downstage and changed and sparred a bit with Mike, we had been calling Dan Severn on the phone every chance we got to see what else he wanted us to do. . another one of our fighters from Dan Severn's Team (Team Danger-Zone, Bloodthirsty) had a fightin Cincinnati (which he won that night, congrats, Major!), so our team was out that night in force.
Before the fight I was so nervous. . . I seriously thought I would pee my pants or puke or something, my mouth was so dry and I had a hard time catching my breath. But when my music started, I danced out to the hexagon, took off my sweatshirt and got ready to rumble.
The fight lasted maybe three minutes. Melissa hit me in the face and rocked me, she got a couple more shots in, too. I am not used to getting hit like that. . It was so hard to think and know what to do. . but luckily Mike was in my corner calling out to me what to do. . I tried to hit her back. . I think I missed, I tried to kick her, she got out of the way of that, too. . But when Mike said go for the clench, I got in close and grabbed her. I took her down to the ground and she was in my guard, I squeezed a bit with my legs and then I managed to sweep her. . I had control for maybe seconds before she swept me back. . She started Hitting me again and all thought went out of my mind. . . This happened I think two more times. . We ended up in a position where she had one of my arms between her legs and then was in a cross body position trying for a key lock, but the angle was odd and we were almost out of the ring. I managed to pull out of it once we were re-positioned more towards the center of the ring, and then I managed to get her back in my guard again.. I worked rubber guard and got her head and one arm trapped between my legs, and then I remembered I could hit her. . I started hitting her in the face while I held her one trapped arm and she tapped. After she tapped I let go instantly (too used to being on my honor and not having a ref!) and her corner yells out, "Keep going, don't stop" so she takes a swing at me. . I jump back and go "Whoa" The ref asks what happened, I said, "She tapped." He asked her, "Did you tap?" and she answered, "Yes."
