Legendary women’s martial artist Kathy Long praised her pupil Daniel Rodriguez ahead of his fight against Mike Perry at UFC Vegas 23.
Long is a pioneer in the world of mixed martial arts. She was part of the commentary team at UFC 1, which shows you how long she truly has been in the game for. She was doing mixed martial arts before it was cool, getting black belts in Aikido and in Kung Fu San Soo in the 1980s before making the move to kickboxing in the 1990s, where she became one of the best women’s kickboxers of all time. In 1991, she was inducted into the Black Belt magazine “Hall of Fame.” She also boxed, learned Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and made her MMA debut at age 45. She won that fight and then in 2015 in Mexico she won another MMA fight at age 51. In addition, she was in a number of movies including “Batman Returns” as the stunt double for Michelle Pfeiffer and she was also in Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers.”