"I never thought I would find someone I could love so much," he said, "and someone I could spar with too."

Mixed martial arts... bringing people together to love and punch and choke each other out.


"Love packs a punch" via the LA Times:

AT a gym tucked away on a grungy block above Sunset Boulevard, 18 heavy punching bags swing slowly from a rack of steel girders, like carcasses on butcher hooks.

A barefoot man with a soft face begins to stalk one of the bags, breaking the silence with two jabs and a thunderous kick. Soon, he is joined by a lanky woman with black, spiky hair and her mother's name, Rhea, tattooed in Gothic script on her left wrist.

They turn on each other, striking with fists, feet, knees and elbows. Her breath quickens. "Suck it up," he tells her. She kicks him, hard, on his neck. "That's better," he says. Then she leans in and gives him a tender kiss.

Here, in the bosom of one of America's most violent sports, love is blossoming.



...Theirs is a new, Spartan existence, draped on the fringes of an emerging sport and far removed from the glitz of the sport's upper echelon. It is embodied by Toby and Roxy: an inseparable couple, college-educated, articulate and ripped with muscles.

...And they train together, whaling on each other to prepare for their next fight, hoping to escape the minor leagues of their sport — "waiting," Toby said one recent afternoon, "for someone to find us."

..."I never thought I would find someone I could love so much," he said, "and someone I could spar with too."

As for Roxy, "I needed to find a man who is tougher than me," she said. "And I did."

Their training sessions can be harsh and aggressive. One recent afternoon, Toby was overseeing sparring sessions when he admonished a fighter who was pulling his punches against Roxy.

"Don't give her any breaks!" he yelled. "Don't be a sissy!"

Some days, it's a bit much for Roxy, who was so meek in high school that her basketball coach ordered her to foul more often.

"I forget that he is a natural fighter," she said, still nurturing a large, yellowing bruise on her shoulder, the remnant of one of Toby's kicks. "I wouldn't call myself a natural fighter. But this is in his blood. I don't particularly like sparring with him. His whole persona changes. It's like fighting with someone that I don't really want to know."

He seems unfazed.

"She loves it," he said with a grin. "You know she does..."