After coping with tragedy, Sara McMann puts up a fight

The former Olympic medalist is ‘ready to be the champ’

The Lily News
Jul 25, 2017 · 5 min read
Sara McMann. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post/Lily illustration)

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Roman Stubbs.

Sara McMann is a former Olympic medalist and a single mother. She plans to become a UFC world champion.

She is the sixth-ranked challenger in the women’s bantamweight division and, despite winning her last three fights, is still searching for a career-making victory over an elite opponent.

McMann is tough, and it shines through during her fights. But that toughness comes from a deeper place. Throughout her life, the 36-year-old has experienced loss in unimaginable ways, and over the past few years, she started sharing her story with students. The topic of her talks? Resilience.

McMann works out at Alliance Champions Training Center in Greenville, S.C. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

The UFC fighter’s parents struggled with heroin addiction, and she grew up at times without electricity or heat. At six years old, she found her mother passed out on the floor of their home after an overdose.

Her mother survived the ordeal, and it brought Sara closer to her brother, Jason, a natural athlete who inspired his younger sister to try out for the boys’ wrestling team when she was 14. She went on to wrestle for the University of Minnesota-Morris.

But in January 1999, when Sara was a college freshman, her brother disappeared. Jason’s mutilated and decomposed body was found about three months later in the woods near Lock Haven, Pa., but his case went cold. McMann’s family appeared on the television show “America’s Most Wanted” in an effort to find his killer.

It took nearly three years before authorities zeroed in on Fabian Desmond Smart, a football player at Lock Haven University who had beaten Jason with a gun and a stick after an altercation at a party before leaving him in the woods to die.

By that point, a grieving McMann had transferred to Lock Haven University and was training with the men’s wrestling team, which would provide the foundation for a precipitous rise in the sport. She competed in her brother’s memory, learning how to channel the pain of her loss into countless victories on the mat. At 23, she won the Olympic silver medal in the 63-kilogram (138.5-pound) weight class in 2004, when women’s freestyle wrestling made its debut at the Athens Games. She became the face of U.S. women’s wrestling.

McMann mid-workout. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

In Athens, a romance blossomed with 27-year-old Steven Blackford, a former all-American wrestler at Arizona State who was attending law school in Washington, D.C. McMann would move with him and begin a new chapter near her birthplace of Takoma Park, Md. The couple planned to marry.

They started their new life together with a cross-country trip after leaving the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Sept. 3, 2004. Around 1:20 p.m., as McMann drove her 1997 Jeep Cherokee east on Interstate 76, her vehicle drifted toward the center lane.

She overcorrected and the vehicle rolled off the shoulder. Neither McMann nor Blackford were wearing seat belts and both were ejected. Blackford died at the scene, and McMann was hospitalized with minor injuries. McMann was eventually charged with reckless driving.

Sara retreated deep within herself, forced to bear the pain of losing her brother and future husband within five years of each other.

While no one understood the depths of despair that McMann reached in the years after, people would often ask her how she became so tough.

McMann decided to go on, though it took years to cope and every day provided its own fight. She went back to training as a wrestler, realizing more than ever the kind of joy it brought her life. She made her professional MMA debut in 2011.

McMann eventually started to work toward a master’s degree in mental health counseling, which helped her compartmentalize her thoughts on the losses that shaped her. Part of dealing with it was fiercely guarding her privacy and simply not talking about it openly. But in 2013, after coping with tragedy, she began sharing her story.

Talking about it “doesn’t make my situation better,” McMann said. But she got through it, and “if it can actually help somebody else, that’s pretty cool.”

Monte Cox, McMann’s manager, points to the birth of her daughter, Bella, as a crucial part of her healing process. McMann gave birth to Bella in 2009 after settling in South Carolina. She is no longer in a relationship with Bella’s father.

McMann with her daughter, Bella. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

The fight game

McMann’s willingness to talk with teenagers about the rawest of her emotions has translated to her career. If part of the UFC’s rise can be credited to its robust presence on social media, then she certainly wasn’t part of the wave.

McMann rarely publicly opened up about her past, and she came to detest the thought of turning herself into a brand. Her work ethic had brought her an Olympic medal and a professional mark of 11–3, but not the self-promotional skills of several of UFC’s top fighters. Taking selfies felt inauthentic, as did any trivial trash talk that might garner headlines in the lead-up to fights.

Yet there McMann was in February, pointing to a television camera after winning her third consecutive fight, a submission in 74 seconds against the up-and-coming Gina Mazany.

“By the time I take that championship from Amanda or Shevchenko,” she announced, “you will see the most complete Sara McMann that you’ve seen.”

She was talking about bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes and top challenger Valentina Shevchenko, who are scheduled to fight for the title on the same card as McMann at UFC 215 — the biggest stage of mixed martial arts — on Sept. 9. McMann is scheduled to fight Ketlen Vieira.

The Lily

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The Lily News

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The Lily

The Lily

The Lily was the first U.S. newspaper for and by women. We’re bringing it back.

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