Debi Purcell

From The Martial Arts Encyclopedia

Debi Purcell is a mixed martial artist. She is also the founder of Fightergirls.net website, a popular source for information on female fighters.

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Biography

Purcell has been involved in fitness and martial arts for over twenty years, with competitive experience in vale tudo, submision grappling, boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, wrestling, taekwondo and gymnastics. Her introduction to MMA came in 1993 during the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship, when she was training alongside some of the first competitors in Huntingdon Beach. Having taken kickboxing, boxing and JKD, she moved on to brazilian jiu jitsu and finally vale tudo under the famous Marco Ruas, when she says "everything started to make sense".

She is actively involved in supporting women's MMA, having set up Fightergirls.net and the WMAA (Women's Martial Arts Association), along with competing herself. Her eventual goal is to develop quality competitions on a regular basis for female MMA fighters, as she discusses in a 2004 interview with TheFightGame.tv.

Her last fight was a win by unanimous decision against Nicole Albrect at King of the Cage 17, on 19 October 2002. Since then, she has been concentrating on projects like Fightergirls.net and the WMAA, though she is still looking for quality opposition.

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