Rolling with the punches

A good fighter doesn’t just hit hard. They can get hit without slowing down.

“Anyone can get punched, but who really wants to get punched, you know? So it takes a really strong-minded person to be able to absorb that punch and come back,” said 25-year-old Jamie Milanowski.

Milanowski, a Homewood resident of about a year, brings both mental strength and what trainer Jon Dye calls “a hard right hand” to the ring in her career as a mixed martial arts fighter. Though she’s only competed in three professional MMA fights so far, the most recent in January, Milanowski said she loves the aggression of the sport and “the challenge of pushing my body and allowing myself to get to know my own limits.”

She didn’t get into the sport on a whim. As Milanowski describes it, she had a hard home life and frequently fought at school. She pursued wrestling and boxing as an outlet first before beginning to train in MMA. Those childhood fights meant Milanowski had the opposite problem of most new fighters.

She wasn’t too cautious — she was too reckless and wouldn’t bother to block the punches.

“I never really had a problem getting hit,” Milanowski said. “That was a problem when I first started in the sport was I didn’t mind getting hit, so I was in there with reckless abandon.”

Now, Milanowski builds both skill and discipline at Champions Freestyle MMA gym with Dye. Since she has sponsorships and fights for King of the Cage, one of the larger MMA promotions in the country, Milanowski treats training and fighting as her full-time job.

Every day includes two to three hours of training at Champions on different skills, and she also does regular running and jiu jitsu classes to broaden her training. Dye, whose clients at Champions include fighters for the UFC and Bellator MMA, said Milanowski’s work ethic and coachable nature make her stand out.

“Whatever I put in here goes into the cage. So when I train, it’s really on me to push myself,” Milanowski said.

Being at Champions every day feels like being part of a family, Milanowski said. But when she enters the ring for a fight, she’s all alone.

“If you get knocked out or beat, all the humiliation is on you. That’s what makes it such a mental battle,” Dye said.

Her pre-fight routine is quiet. Milanowski said she usually takes a nap and reads a book or works on her knitting in the hours beforehand. Milanowski said she enjoys knitting not only because it’s calming, but she can create something like a scarf by picking up her needles in the short gaps between training.

She’s not immune to nerves, but Milanowski said she always gets through them by allowing herself to fully experience those emotions instead of suppressing them.

“I don’t ever want to deny my body of what it’s going through,” she said.

But once she’s in the ring, Milanowski’s only focused on the win.

“It’s more of an emotional battle than a physical one, I feel. Because my body’s already conditioned to be in there and to act a certain way and perform, but you can never really prepare your mind for that until you’re in that moment,” Milanowski said. “So with more experience comes a better fighter.”