She's pretty, articulate and can break you in half. Las Vegas native Lisa King, 33, fights in the muay Thai martial-arts style, and if you want to see for yourself, tune in to the Oxygen channel at 9 p.m. August 7 for the debut of Fight Girls. The film follows a group of American women—trained by another Las Vegan, Master Toddy—who compete for a chance to fight in Thailand, home of muay Thai.
How did you come to be doing this?
I started about 10 years ago. I wanted to get into some kind of martial arts. I did research, and probably went to every kind of style to see what interested me most. I stumbled across muay Thai and fell in love with it instantly. It appeared everyone was working against another person as opposed to just working on forms or a bag.
I did it for many years as a form of fitness. My trainer started having me do some ring announcing, and then some commentating. And the gradual progression was to move into fighting, which I started doing about three years ago.
Why were you so interested in the martial arts in the first place?
Growing up, my brothers were always involved in boxing and martial arts. I was the baby of the family and the only girl, so pretty much everything on TV was either a boxing match or something Bruce Lee. I thought it was beautiful. My mother always felt that that was more for the boys to do, not the girl, so she had me in pageants and cheerleading and volleyball—lots of girl activities. When I graduated and was on my own, I decided I could make my own decisions about what I did in my spare time and for exercise, and this was pretty much the exercise choice for me.
When you decided to go into match fighting, were your mother and brothers apprehensive?
Absolutely. When I started, my mother thought I'd be doing points fighting, where you're kicking, and then when you make contact, you stop, and the force isn't anything that's going to harm you. When she finally understood that it's more like boxing, where you have three two-minute rounds, and you go for it, she was very, very concerned. She told me she wouldn't go to any of my fights—she didn't want to see her daughter in the ring. However, she did go to my first fight, she saw me win, and she's been to every fight thereafter. She's not as nervous for me as she used to be.
My brothers didn't go to my fights until this last year. They live in Arizona, and they had a work function here in town, so they brought the guys from their office. They said that at one point it was really cool to be the brother of a person in the ring, but at another point they were like, Why does my sister do this?
I won that fight, and they were really, really proud of me, but one of my brothers came up and was like, What did we do wrong?! They've moved on, they don't do any martial arts anymore, and I've kind of taken it to a level that they never envisioned for themselves. So they were kind of apprehensive to see their sister in the ring, but now they're very supportive.
Was there ever a point when you thought to yourself, Hey, this isn't what girls do ...? We're kind of socialized to think that way ...
I've always gone against norms. I was okay doing things girls don't do.
What is it about martial arts that sustains you now?
I guess it's kind of an alter ego for who I am during the day. I'm a mother of two, and I have worked in marketing and publishing for all of my adult life, so everything I do is very regimented; everything I do, I'm very confident I know the end result. I've worked in management for years, so I'm usually the one trying to get everyone motivated, to bring out the best in everybody else.
In the gym, the roles are reversed; I'm seeking guidance from someone else who's pushing me as far as I can go. And I don't know the end result. It's the ultimate test of myself. When you get in the ring, you're putting it all on the line, and you don't know if you're going to win.
What's the secret to keeping your cool when someone's coming after you?
All the preparation beforehand. I train three hours a day, six days a week. And I spar with a lot of guys.
When you get into the ring, you know this is going to be coming, you know you've probably been in worse situations in training. In a fight, because I train with guys significantly bigger than me, I guess my mentality is that I'm fighting a person who's my weight and is a female. I guess I almost overtrain myself, so when I get up against a girl who's 115 pounds like myself, I don't have a fear that I'm going to get hurt. That's probably a false sense of security.
In regards to the events of the movie, what were the high and low points of the experience?
The high point was definitely the fight in Thailand. Being in Thailand, experiencing a beautiful culture, getting to train at a lot of different gyms, getting to test your skills against what's considered the best of the best. And you're training in the motherland of the sport. It's really cool.
I guess the low point was the training up until then. First of all, you didn't know if you were going [to Thailand]. So you're in the gym, putting in your all, training for a fight, not knowing if you really had a fight. It played on you mentally. Not only are you training, you're trying to prove to Master Toddy that you're more ready to go than any of the other seven girls.
How were you received in Thailand?
As far as the [native fighters], and you'll be able to see this clearly in the movie, they were not happy we were there. They thought Americans had no place in their sport. All three of their girls, in interviews in the movie, they said, American girls are beautiful, but they can't fight; they have no power. My girl specifically said she had 100 percent confidence that she was going to knock me out.
But as far as the people in the town, once they started seeing us train, seeing our dedication, they really embraced us. At the hotel we stayed at, there were a lot of people from the hair salons to the restaurants to the women who did massage out on the beach, they were all natives, and they all showed up to support us at the fight. They weren't rooting for the Thai people. It was great. To have everyone come cheer us on because they knew we were taking their sport seriously, that was amazing.