Jinh Yu Frey will have a backup plan if MMA doesn’t work out. Maybe two. Or more.
The Invicta FC women’s flyweight just completed her MBA while working full time at an outpatient cancer facility. Somehow she managed to juggle MMA training into all of that.
“It’s good to not have all your eggs in the same basket,” Frey told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour.
The Texas native would have learned that the hard way two years ago if she didn’t have things lined up. Frey was the principle in a viral video when she knocked out Darla Harris in highlight-reel fashion at SCS 18 on July 27, 2013. The punch that put Harris to sleep looked great on YouTube, but it also broke Frey’s hand. She didn’t fight again for 14 months.
“That’s definitely a prime example,” Frey said. “It was horrible, because I had all this momentum going. … Had that been my main source of income, that would have really hurt.”
Luckily, it was not. Frey, who meets Liz McCarthy at Invicta FC 14 on Saturday night in Kansas City, has been working with cancer sufferers, administering radiation, for years now. It’s a difficult job, but Frey takes positives out of it and gets a kick out of some of the patients actively following her MMA career.
“There are definitely days where it’s mentally draining,” Frey said. “These are people I’m seeing on a regular basis. I get to know them, I get to know their personal lives, I get to know their families. Cancer being what it is, sometimes we lose these patients. That can be a bit of an emotional drain. Then just listening to people during the day and hear their struggles, it’s hard not to internalize some of that.”
Perhaps MMA training and getting to fight inside of a cage is a bit of therapy.
“It’s something that I’ve come to really enjoy and I’ve found that it’s really cathartic to me,” Frey said. “I just enjoy getting in there and challenging myself. The schoolwork and everything challenges me mentally and this is a little more of a physical challenge.”
Frey (3-1) is still inexperienced, but she is someone Invicta could very well point toward a title shot, especially if she beats McCarthy. She’s marketable, articulate and has a fascinating backstory. It also doesn’t hurt that the all-women’s promotion could use more talent to step forward in the atomweight division. Frey is coming off a first-round submission win over Cassie Robb in December.
If she wins Saturday, Frey will sit down with her husband Doug and re-evaluate her path. The MBA is definitely something to fall back on, but Frey, 30, might want to give it her best shot at MMA.
“Of course anything I do I want to be great at,” she said. “I’m a pretty competitive person. I don’t really half ass anything. If I’m gonna do something, I want to be the best at it.
“It originally started out as a hobby. Now who can say? I’ll take it as far as it can go. I do have a degree and a career just in case something happens.”
Frey also would not completely rule out a move up to 115 pounds, which would open up the door for a future in the UFC. Right now, the biggest MMA promotion in the world only has women’s weight classes at 135 and 115.
There are many decisions to make and a whole lot more juggling to do. Frey has made it look easy up until this point. The fight with McCarthy will be a pivotal one for her MMA path.
“There’s a lot of new changes on the horizon for us,” Frey said. “We’re going to delve into it a little further after the fight.”