UFC fighter Nicco Montaño (top) and Victoria Carney practice jiu jitsu at the community gym. Montaño swung by a couple of the classes while she was in town. She rolled - jiu jitsu term for sparring - with Carney and instructor Matt Nore on Feb. 15. Nore, as a white belt, said it was humbling to get schooled by Montaño, a purple-belt in jiu jitsu.
A mixed martial artist who was the inaugural flyweight champion on a 2017 television show - and made history as the first American Native woman Ultimate Fighting Championship title holder - punched in a short visit to Wrangell in February.
The purple-belt jiu jitsu holder, who was in town to visit a friend, made a surprise drop-in on a Wrangell class Feb. 16 without telling the participants who she was, at first.
"Normally, it's been Victoria Carney and I," Wrangell jiu jitsu instructor Matt Nore said Feb. 22. "Victoria said, 'Oh, have you ever done jiu jitsu before?' And she said, 'I'm a purple belt.' We got excited."
Nore and Carney didn't realize who they had on their hands until they started rolling - what sparring is called in jiu jitsu.
"There were times she could control my arms with her feet and her legs. I haven't been used to rolling with someone like that in Wrangell. It was a very humbling and new experience," Nore, a white belt holder, said.
Montaño won the Ultimate Fighting Championship women's flyweight title, beating Roxanne Modafferi in the finale of "The Ultimate Fighter 26," a reality television show in 2017.
"You could watch my transformation through that show," Montaño said Feb. 20. "I talked a lot about my culture and being Indigenous."
Montaño is of the Diné (Navajo People), from the Tódich'iinii (Bitter Water People) clan. She's from Lukachukai, Arizona, within the Navajo Nation.
She first got a taste for mixed martial arts hitting pads at the gym her late father and boxer Frankie Montaño owned in New Mexico.
In winning the flyweight title, she "was the second-to-last seed against 18 others. It was a pretty cool Cinderella story."
Since then, Montano has had several fights canceled because of injuries and inability to make weight. She was stripped of the flyweight title in 2018, according to ESPN, after not making weight.
In 2019, she was suspended for six months by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for testing positive for ostarine, a banned substance, according to ESPN. Montaño, Sean O'Malley, Marvin Vettori and Augusto Mendes all failed random, out-of-competition drug tests for the substance, according to the April 23, 2019, news report.
After investigating, the agency determined the four fighters did not knowingly ingest the substance, and the positive tests were caused by contaminated supplements that contained ostarine.
In 2020, her coach got COVID-19. She got COVID. She missed a weight check-in by seven pounds to make bantamweight, the next weight class up from flyweight.
"I was pretty anemic. No matter what my calorie deficit, my weight wasn't coming off. I hardly watch fights anymore," Montaño said.
Montaño was released from UFC in August 2021.
Being on a pedestal was tough, "having to put myself as a spokesperson" for the Navajo people. "Coming up as an underdog, it held me down for a while."
Montaño has been advocating for missing and murdered Indigenous women and teaching self-defense to women, kids, and in coed classes. She taught a two-day workshop in the spring of 2021 in Hydaburg.
Having a bay of traditional values allows her to "advise teens on what I have been through. How they can stay safe, physically, but also add in those traditional values."
Her friend in Wrangell, Jeremiah James, teaches skin sewing. "He invited me to check out Wrangell."
Her mom is vice president of the chapter house on the Navajo reservation. "(A chapter house) is where we can vote on things, building a new school, or lowering trash rates," she said.
Her grandparents owned the only trading post for 50 miles that still goes off the bartering system. "It's a little convenience store. There can be an elder who comes in and trades a rug for mutton."
The COVID-19 era has battered the Navajo Nation. "We lost a lot of people (during the pandemic.) It was hard to find hospital beds for the elders," she said.
Her plan is to get back into shape and fight this year, despite chronic injuries. "I'm slowly getting the itch (to fight)," she said. "Settle down the noise, get back to grinding."
"In jiu jitsu, you have to know a lot about your body," she said. "Kids understand the importance of body awareness. How heavy one painful slap can be." That's why jiu jitsu is called the gentle art, "understanding your body can be used as a weapon, and also understanding when to apply it to prevent a situation from getting too far."
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