It’s hard to believe that everything Charmaine Tweet has been able to experience in martial arts—a decorated kick-boxing career complete with forthcoming amateur and professional mixed martial arts bouts—can all be traced back to a “Sugar” Ray Leonard VHS tape.
“I’ve always been in fitness and I picked up a ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard boxing aerobic workout tape and it got me hooked—I actually wanted to box. I went to Duke Roufus and I said, ‘I want to box,’ and he said, ‘yeah, you could do that—but you have the perfect build for a kick-boxer. Do you want to do that?’”
The rest, as they say, is history.
A student of the world-renowned kick-boxing coach Duke Roufus in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for nearly five years, Tweet holds a resume in kick-boxing that includes a record of 10 wins with only one loss and a number of championships in both Canada and Thailand—a nation that boasts an unparalleled passion for kick-boxing.
Since moving from Milwaukee back to her native-Canada a few years ago, Tweet has taken up mixed martial arts—and has yet to look back.
“I was involved in Muay Thai for 10 years and I was talking with Duke at the WEC in Edmonton and he said to me, ‘What the hell are you doing? Get in MMA and make some money—you’ve been doing it free for long enough,’ so here I am.”
On Saturday, May 28, after a year of searching for an opponent, Tweet will make her long-awaited mixed martial arts debut against Tia Wishart at the Turvey Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan under the Saturday Night Fights banner.
While she is quick to point out that she isn’t looking past her opponent, Tweet has already booked her professional debut—in three weeks time—against Ronda Rousey, in a bout that will be contested on a School of Hard Knocks card in Calgary, Alberta.
Although she—again—insists she isn’t looking past her opponents, Tweet is confident moving forward in mixed martial arts.
“I feel that I can go all the way … I started striking when I was 24, so to go from knowing nothing to world-champion in eight years—it gives you a little bit of confidence … I figure I’ve got, probably, 10 years left in me—considering women age seven years slower than men [laughs].”
Tweet, a student of AJ Scales at Complete MMA in Regina, is so confident in her skills, in fact, that she believes she is 18 months away from being titlist in Strikeforce.
“I’m looking for a Strikeforce championship … That would be the icing on the cake; I’ve won kick-boxing championships and Strikeforce is the pinnacle of women’s MMA. I feel the future holds a championship in Strikeforce.”
Although Tweet, who will be inducted into the Rural Sports Hall of Fame on Friday, admits that she would’ve never gotten involved in martial arts had she not stumbled across that VHS tape a few years back, she—and mixed martial arts fans everywhere—are nevertheless grateful she did.
“It’s been quite the experience,”—as Tweet said—may be an understatement.
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