Just 26 seconds. That is how long it took mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Ramona Pascual to defeat her Russian competitor, Yulia Kutsenko, last year. It was Pascual’s comeback fight after an injury forced her to stop fighting for two years. With 10 years of experience fighting professionally, Pascual is no stranger to knocks and scrapes, but tearing a ligament in her knee brought a mix of emotional and physical pain that forced her to reassess her identity.
Pascual never could have dreamed she would be the first female fighter in Hong Kong to make a career out of MMA. She studied finance at university and joined a small financial services company after graduating. However, office work left her feeling unfulfilled. “It didn’t make me excited to get out of bed and go to work and really put in the hours,” she says.
This story is from the July 2020 edition of Tatler Hong Kong.
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This story is from the July 2020 edition of Tatler Hong Kong.
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