Catherine Costigan: ‘I wasn’t a girl who ever really liked team sports’

It has been a hectic afternoon at the Palms Casino for Catherine Costigan.

Forty eight hours out from her first Stateside fight and she is in demand. America hasn’t seen her do her thing yet but that doesn’t stop America from wanting a piece of her.

NBC sit her down for an interview, then there’s a phone call from Women’s Way back home before the army of bloggers and podcasters that chronicle every cough, spit and choke hold of the mixed martial arts world line up for offerings.

Hectic. But bearable. Bearable because it wasn’t always like this. In fact, it has never been like this.

“I had my first MMA fight in Galway. Shona Maguire was my opponent’s name, she was from Dublin. She’s a vet now, has no more time for beating people up in a cage. Shona and I put on such a performance,” recalls Costigan, Limerick’s Alpha Female Warrior.

“It was in the Black Box. We were warming up in the back and it really was black, you couldn’t see in front of your face. Back then the ladies didn’t even have changing rooms, so you went and changed in the bathroom and you’d meet the girls who were there to watch. It would be hilarious, they were like ‘how do you get your figure, my God, look at you. I couldn’t do that because I’d miss McDonald’s’. They always wanted to know about my diet and I’m here trying to get the blood out of my hair.” Things are significantly brighter in Las Vegas this week. You can see in front of your face for a start. And while there are more blinding lights further down the strip at the MGM Grand, where Conor McGregor will break Ultimate Fighting Championship box office records on Saturday night, tonight at the Cosmopolitan, Costigan will step into her own spotlight.

The Invicta Fighting Championships is one of the premier women’s mixed martial arts organisations. Invicta 13 will mark a debut with the company for Costigan, when she fights Amber Brown. She hopes it will prove just another stepping stone. The next step for the atomweight is New Mexico southpaw Brown, the next after that a shot at the title before the year is out, the next elevation to the real big time and the blinding lights of the UFC.

Costigan is all about the next step. But what about the first step into this life of cage fighting?

“With my dad, as a kid, watching Bruce Lee,” explains Costigan, who is 35 but could legitimately pass for about half that, the anti-ageing supplements she has taken since the age of 20 looking to have all but frozen time.

“He was quite fascinated with him, my dad. He used to pretend to be Bruce Lee and go and practice those moves with me. He got thrown out of a pub in Limerick one night for trying to be Bruce Lee and trying a kick that went through a wall and tore out the plasterboard. They obviously threw him out.

“I watched Bruce Lee and I liked it because I wasn’t a girl who ever really liked team sports, I wasn’t interested in hurling or any of those sports. No disrespect to them, but it just wasn’t for me. When Dermot [McGrath, her coach, confidant and sidekick of 20 years] began teaching kickboxing classes, I asked my mum could I do it and she said okay, I was 14.

“My only combat sports up to that point were fighting my brother. He’s an opera singer in London now, so you talk about complete opposites in a house — opera music on one side and on the other side me throwing myself at a punch bag. But we were brother and sister so we still fought. In his own way he made me tough too, he was bigger than me, much bigger.” “But I always remember that first class and I walked in and there were 10 boys and they all looked over at me and were like ‘wow’. I was the first girl to come to the class. I walked in and didn’t know what to expect but there was an atmosphere — from Dermot mostly — that I liked. I don’t think the boys wanted me there.

“In one night straight I beat all the boys. All of them. Each match came up and all Dermot said was ‘keep winning’. They were words that I’ve just kept with me. You want to be the best champion? Then just never, ever lose. It’s a simple formula, so simple. But all the ingredients are hard to find, hard to lay your hand on, you need to mix it all up really well.” McGrath, who now runs the Pankration kickboxing academy with Costigan in Limerick, has been watching his protege turned partner mix it all up for a lifetime now. He might not have known the teenager who walked through the doors — and the gender divide — 20 years ago would lead him all the way to Vegas.

But he knew he had something out of the ordinary on his hands.

“I remember her coming through the door. I remember more her application form, she wrote her age as ‘14 (nearly 15)’ because she was worried she might be too young to train. But you know when someone special comes into your gym and mentally she is just so special. She finds a way to do it. There’s no stubbornness, she’ll change tack and go win it.” Winning is all Costigan has done in her professional career.

She’ll enter the ring tonight with a blemish-free record of 5-0. Of all the weeks to make your Stateside debut, she has picked a good one. It seems as though the entire world of mixed martial arts has descended on the Strip. Some of the thousands of Irish who have made the pilgrimage in honour of ‘The Notorious’ are sure to wind their way into the Cosmopolitan to roar on their countrywoman.

If MMA is hot right now, and it is scaldingly, then women’s MMA is even hotter. Ronda Rousey has battered down doors. A more perfect poster girl the UFC couldn’t have dreamt. Rousey is devastatingly brilliant in the Octagon and even more dynamic out of it. Hollywood has already been seduced with Rousey starring in Fast and the Furious and Expendables franchise as well as the recent Entourage movie.

“It’s just like Conor, it just takes one special person,” says Costigan. “Ronda has it all. Ability, marketability, an Olympic heart. People like that are very hard to beat. I have no doubt that I have got a lot of my opportunities because of Ronda. Cagefighters looked at what was happening with Ronda and said they wanted a piece of that. That’s why I am where I am. I owe Ronda. If I were to meet her I would shake her hand.” There is another who Costigan feels she owes dearly, without whose help she wouldn’t have made it to Las Vegas... or perhaps ever have fought again.

“There was a point when I knew I really needed to be a professional fighter. I had experienced — for about eight years — really bad neck pain. Surgeons said to me ‘look if you want to retire, do it’. I was 32 at the time. I went to three or four surgeons around Ireland and all the time I’m thinking ‘I don’t want to retire’,” she explains.

“Then I went to the guy who had done Brian O’Driscoll’s neck, Dr Ashley Poynton. He’s still in the Mater Private and he’s one of the best in the world. He said he’d have me back (fighting) in five months. There is absolutely no chance I would be here in Vegas if it wasn’t for Dr Poynton. There is not always a guarantee that neck fusion would work but we had to take a chance because the pain was getting so unbearable. I couldn’t put Dermot through the risk of me being paralysed in a fight. So there’s a titanium plate that is in my neck now and you wouldn’t even tell. It’s been perfect ever since. I came back from the neck surgery and no woman has ever done that in MMA.” Watching your daughter, titanium plate and all, enter a cage to take on another with precious few holds barred cannot be an easy experience.

For that very reason Costigan’s mother Geraldine opts not to.

“I do not want my mother watching my fight,” she says. “She’s never been to see me. I think it’s better that way, not to expose her to it because I love her to bits. She understands more and more what I do now because she’s exposed to MMA more with its growth in Ireland. She understands how big and important it is to me and she will let me chase my dream.” The dream is very much alive for Catherine Costigan, the next steps there to be taken.

Under Las Vegas’s lights, she can see clearer in front of her than ever before.