(slow intense music) (bell ringing) – Welcome to the final showdown! (upbeat dance music) (gong) – Hey, I'm Michelle. – And I'm Jordan. – And we're going to be UFC fighters! – No, we're not but we're gonna try. – Well, we're gonna train
like them for two months. Last October when I was walking home I was mugged at knife point. I'm doing this because I
want to overcome that fear. And whenever I'm faced with
a life-threatening situation ever again, if it happens, I want to be mentally ready for that. Have you ever been scared
for your life in a fight? – No, not really . – I think that this is
going to be able to kind of empower us a little bit more and instill more confidence in ourselves. – I think another challenging
aspect of this sport is that you have to meet a weight class… – We're going to take a look
at your weight and body fat so we make sure that you have enough lean to show on your frame. You're going to be working
with your nutritionist to get you within your weight class.
– [Jordan] I was focused
on how to eat right and properly fuel my body. – I can't believe that
I have to lose this. For the next eight weeks
we're pretty much going to be training six days a week. – If I don't have a six
pack at the end of this, I'm going to be fucking pissed. – My name is Krzysztof Soszynski. Former UFC Light Heavyweight Contender. I am here at BuzzFeed to
train Michelle and Jordan. Alright, so let's get our first punch in. So, the one, the jab. Let's learn how to punch first and then we'll start moving
our feet as we punch. So right now, we're just going to punch… – The first day of training kicked my ass, just like any other training
session does and should. So it was tough but it
was a good challenge. – Now we go to the middle
punches, middlistic punches are your hooks.
Think of, there's a coffee
mug on the table right here, You're gonna reach out for it, you're gonna bring it almost to your face. Very similar to that, yes. – What I really loved about K Sauce was he really took us seriously. He didn't water down the
training at all for us. He gave us the real deal. – Hut, hut, hut, two Suh, two, three suh, suh, two hut, block block – Ah, ah, ah ah ah (laughing) We did it, we finished lesson number one! So on a weekly schedule Jordan and I would train with K Sauce three days a week for a
private mixed martial arts and mixed martial arts specific training. Outside of that, I was
running 12 miles a week, lifting for two hours a week,
riding my bike for five hours, and also going to yoga for three hours. I just woke up and I feel like I need to go right back to sleep.
– Two hours a day, five days a week of strength and cardio and conditioning work that I normally do which is all of my power lifting,
Olympic lifting, crossfit stuff I'm hoping that getting
sick was just a coincidence and it's not my body telling me that I'm doing to much. – We're going to UFC Fight Week! – Fight Week! – We're gonna see all the
fights tonight and tomorrow and we're also going to
train at the UFC gyms. So it's gonna be fun! – I think Michelle and I
did Vegas very differently from how most people do it. It's 5:30 in the morning. – We have training. (techno music) – So it was really cool. It was our first time in a UFC gym and it was kind of a
different environment.
– Getting to train at the
UFC gym in the Octagon was so awesome because it felt
like our ultimate goal of becoming a fighter was just becoming that more real. – I had seen the UFC fights on TV before but seeing it live, for the first time got me so much more amped
than I thought it was. – You can see the blood flying off people you can hear the bones cracking. – Within minutes we're
seeing all these knockouts and I just got so excited and so amped up. – So the plan was for us to… You guys were gonna fight me. – Yeah. – Alright, we're gonna
spar against each other in a final competition, well, you guys are gonna spar
against each other. (laughing) – Cool.
– Finding out that Jordan
and I were going to spar each other in a finale fight was a little bit daunting at first. – So you guys get to kick each other and punch each other… – And so when we found out
that we were gonna fight, I was excited, it gave me
a very specific end goal and I think when you're
working towards a specific goal it's a lot easier to put the work in. – We just finished our
first workout for week five and we sparred each other today. – For the first time. We punched each other in the face. – Yes. – For the first time. – And I cried. It was one of the most embarrassing things that's ever happened to me. I had a really hard time
seeing sparring as fun and associating it from
an actual confrontation in my past. It just like, blows my mind, how like last week we were in Vegas
watching these girls just like, beat the shit out of each other and they're not crying. – The fear doesn't ever really go away you just have to learn how to manage it.
– I wanna be like that. I wanna be fearless. Coming into the second month final weeks of training it was getting a little crazy. We were training a lot. We were doing a lot in
the gym, a lot on the mat. – I think I was starting
to just be really ready for it to be over. – We just finished
learning how to wrestle. – I wanna throw up. I think my body was adjusting
to the training but mentally I was very exhausted, I think by the end of it. – Today we're doing a UFC,
MMA fighters weight cut. At this point in time, we have been fasting for 16 hours and we're about to do a 90 minute workout wearing something called a sauna suit while covered in Albolene
which is makeup remover… – That can't be safe. Weight cut day sucked and
I knew it was gonna suck and I wasn't looking forward to it.
– Going out on our ten minute run. A weight cut day is basically the day before a fight happens fighters have to meet their weight class and if you're hovering a little bit above you have to do a bunch of activities and dehydration techniques
to lose the water weight in your body so you can
meet your weight class. – It was very difficult to not just say, "Fuck it, I don't want to do this" but then you kind of have
to think about the fact that fighters don't have the privilege to say "Fuck it, I don't want to do this" because if they don't do it, they don't get to fight.
– I can't believe we did it. – Only one more day. After the weight cut was done we took our after photos and I think it was really cool to see the change in my body composition because I definitely leaned out a lot over the last two months. – I was really surprised
how much my body changed. – It's Michelle Khare
versus Jordan Shalhoub in the final showdown. We are minutes away from this
highly anticipated match. I know I am excited and
I'm a little bit scared, they are, they are really fighting.
How excited are you for this match? – I am, holy shit. I'm more so scared than excited. – I'm so excited, I'm really so giddy. The entire office is here. We've all stopped working, nothing matters except for this fight. – I'm nervous and excited for them. I think it's gonna be a great fight. They're amazing people
and amazing strong women and I think they're gonna rock it. – I could feel the nervousness like boiling up inside me and the anticipation was
really, really killing me.
– I was really nervous because
I felt that a lot of people didn't believe in me. – Do you have a favorite
going into this match today? – I'm rooting for Jordan. – I think Jordan obviously
has more of a power. – I know Jordan is like crazy built. – I'm a little partial to Jordan here, I've known her a little bit longer. – I think Michelle just has
a really great work ethic I think she's gonna surprise people. – Michelle's got a speed. – Michelle is a hard
worker and trained a lot so this could go either way.
– You have been working with
these girls for 60 days. What are your thoughts
going into this match? – I'm actually really excited. I think the majority of
the crowd here doesn't really understand what they're
getting themselves into. I mean, we're doing the real thing. This isn't a scripted.. This isn't like, where
we planned this out.
The fact that over the
60 days they went from not knowing a single thing
about mixed martial arts to now where they get to spar
three, three minute rounds. That's kind of unheard of. It doesn't really happen. It took me years just to
get comfortable with this. So the fact that they're
doing it at 60 days is absolutely mind-blowing. – Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the final showdown! (crowd cheering) And now, please, focus your attention to the main entrance and welcome our first fighter…
(rap music) And please, bring your focus back to the main entrance and welcome her competitor, our second fighter… (rap music) (crowd cheering) (bell rings) – The first minute of the
fight was kind of crazy because Michelle and I both
experienced what they call the adrenaline dunk. You just go blind and adrenaline
surges through your body and it's like I was this
uncontrollable fighter. – I knew that the first round
would be the hardest because she would have the most energy.
I just tried to like
stay as calm as possible and use the best combinations I knew because I knew that rounds two and three would be very different for her. (bell rings) (gong) Second round was feeling better because I think we were both
getting a little more tired so I just slowed things down. – [Jordan] I was like, "Oh man, I'm exhausted already, maybe I should scale it back". Cause' we've done this before but never in front of an audience. – [Michelle] This is
what a lot of fighters in particularly female
fighters go through. All of these audience members, none of whom have potentially
ever done any MMA whatsoever are critiquing you, like, "Oh, well she should ave swung here, and then taken this person down when…" No shit, Sherlock.
Okay, let's see you get in the ring and try to do that. (gong) – [Jordan] Last round
I kept telling myself, "Three minutes and it's over,
three minutes and it's over, you can do anything for three minutes". So I tried my best but I was tired, I'm not gonna lie, I was very tired. – [Michelle] I thought that
I was doing really well in the third round. I told myself before the third round just to go back to basics and that seemed to work
really well for me. (bell rings) (crowd cheering) – [Keith] Give it up, give
it up, give it up stand up! Ladies and gentlemen, in the first round Jordan took it with a
score of ten to nine.
In the final round ten to nine went to Michelle. And in the second round, both of you scored nine, 28 to 28 final! – What? (crowd cheering and booing) – I have no idea who won the second round it was even to me. I really don't know who
won the second round, if to me whether they both
scored really well on both sides I had to give it nine, nine. They were both even on the second round. – I went into this
challenge wanting to be able to be stronger because I had
been physically assaulted and I wanted to have
skills to prevent that from happening again.
I wasn't expecting to be
forced to face a lot of mental fears that I had and just
carrying that knowledge with me now makes me feel
more confident in my body than I ever have before. – I think you can only go into a fight with so much planning
because there is this unpredictable-ness of your opponent. So I think by the end of it, fighting created this really
cool challenge for me mentally that I was able to kind of
overcome and its always cool to train your mind and your body in like a completely different
way than you're used to. – A lot of women don't
have exposure to this sport because there are fewer
women in it but I think that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
– I think everybody should
give it a try if they want to but know that it's gonna be
difficult and it's gonna take a lot of dedication, for sure. – I think both of these ladies exhibit perhaps the most incredible
thing we've ever seen in a BuzzFeed video. – [Jordan] But I think it was worth it. I think we both feel very
accomplished right now.
– I'm proud of us. Go team. Let's go eat dessert. – Yeah, I'm hungry. – We haven't done that in a while (laughs).
