Roxanne Modafferi

From The Martial Arts Encyclopedia

Roxanne Modafferi (born 24 September 1982) is an American mixed martial artist, who has lived in Japan for a number of years.

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Biography

Modafferi's training began in taekwondo as a teenager in Pennsylvania, moving on to Mark Lawler's kempo karate two years later. Full of confidence, she then began attending the Dalton Judo Club in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Her description of the experience is; "after I believed I was the absolute coolest thing to fall from the sky, I...learned what it was like to fly". She went on to gain a brown belt in the style, but her training was cut short when she left to study at the University of Massachusetts. Three months before her studies began, a fellow brown belt brought her to a Royce Gracie Brazilian Jiu Jitsu association in Adams, MA, where she trained intensively for three months.

Modafferi majored in Japanese with a minor in Linguistics. While at university, she found the Amherst Athletic club, where New England Submission Fighting is based. In addition, she trained at another Royce Gracie association in Hartford, Connecticut for about a year (necessitating a weekly two hour round trip), also investigating Jeremy Libiszewski's School of Self-Defence in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. Next came Joao Amaral's New England BJJ club, now associated with Brazilian Top Team; Modafferi says "Those guys are tough as concrete is hard, and beat my weaknesses out of me when they found them". To work her striking, she also attended the Sityodtong Muay Thai academy in Everett, run by Mark DellaGrotte.

Modafferi spent September 2003 to June 2004, her junior year, in Tokyo, Japan. This enabled her to compete in a number of NHB and BJJ competitions, where she eventually achieved a 3-0 record in the Smack Girl promotion and defeated Jennifer Howe (who at that time was considered the best in the US, if not the world) in Hook n Shoot. In Japan she trained at the Cross Point club in Kichijouji, which taught both muay thai and BJJ. She hopes one day to write a book about her experiences during that time, having already contributed several articles on the topic. After graduating in May 2005, she secured a position with Berlitz teaching English in Japan, arriving for the second time in July 2005.

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