Kiara is representing Alberton, SA on an international MMA stage

Kiara Fegen, a mixed martial artist from New Redruth, represented the South African MMA team at the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation tournament in Uzbekistan in November, where she won the gold medal.

She went through a process of trials to get onto the SA MMA team. She then competed for Gauteng at nationals, where the first and second place got chosen to represent SA internationally.

The next step in her amateur career was to compete at the African Continental competition, known as All Africa. She rounded her amateur career off with a gold medal win at the IMMAF world tournament.

Kiara spoke about her exploits in MMA so far.

“I have 12 fights in my career so far. This year I became the ACE and GFC featherweight champion, I won SA nationals and won gold at the worlds. MMA is my passion and when I started doing it, it was because I wanted to learn how to defend myself against bullies,” said Kiara.

Kiara also overcame food poisoning while in Uzbekistan and still managed to finish her opponent in 56 seconds after managing to maintain her weight to be able to compete.

“I was suffering from food poisoning. I managed to stay in my weight category although I was a bit underweight due to being sick, and I won,” she said.

Her coaches, Roedolf Jackson, Huntly Smith, JP Krueger, Nathanial Komana and Justin Walker have been key and improving her overall MMA skill set.

Kiara is set to become a professional MMA fighter and will be representing Alberton and SA on an international stage.

“I’m going to end my amateur career with gold at worlds, and next year I will take the next step in my career,” said Kiara.