19 year-old Miranda Maverick is a full-time honor student at Drury University and works as a waitress at Cracker Barrell…So what does she do in her free time?
She beats the tar out of people as an accomplished MMA fighter with a 7-1 record who hopes to turn pro soon.
"I started out with self-defense and wanted to make sure I could take care of myself," Maverick explained. "It became a passion as I got into it."
Maverick grew up in eight different states because of her father's frequent moves as a property developer.. And she got her strength and toughness working on farms.
"I built fence with my dad," she recalls. "I've been with him every step of the way from bush-hogging to feeding cows to picking up buckets of feed and taking them somewhere."
Starting with arm-wresling as a three-year-old, Miranda used that strength in a variety of sports from gymnastics to wrestling on the Buffalo high school boys team.
"Since a young age I've always liked competing with the boys," Miranda said. "I was raised to where I'm equal with them and can do just about as much as they can. Then middle-school hit and they were geting their hormones and everything and getting stronger than me and I didn't like that."
She's still a pioneer though, wrestling in the brand-new Drury men's program. But it's life in the octagon, despite its brutality, where she feels most comfortable.
"I finally learned that the girls that are hitting me are not gonna hit me near as hard as the guys in the gym," she said. "And not near as hard as the things in life I've been through that have prepared me to get to this point."
Just as other female fighters have discovered, Miranda admits there's a male-bias in the sport.
"I have to deal with the sexism part of this a lot," she said with a smile. "A lot of the older generation especially thinks it's just wrong for me to be fighting. That I belong at home doing the housework and stuff like that. Me doing good is puzzling to them. They just don't understand what it means personally to me."
And if you don't understand what an intelligent young woman with a double-major in psychology and sociology is doing in a sport like this?
"Everybody has their own passion," she answers. "And instead of partying and doing stupid things in college I've find this. It's a family-based thing. My whole family can participate in it. Plus if nothing else I have a self-defense background where I feel comfortable and secure."
