Graham Couch

Lansing State Journal

No matter how many times Amanda Bobby Cooper steps into a ring or cage or octagon with the intention of knocking out another fighter, there is a part of her that still relates to her sixth-grade self, frozen with indecision in the hallway at Bath Middle School after being shoved by a classmate.

“I don’t like conflict to this day,” Cooper said. “If you were to start yelling at me, I would freeze up again. I’ve been fighting 13 years, I still feel like I would sit in a hallway and freeze up.”

The disdain for conflict would seem an odd (and perhaps dangerous) trait for a successful fighter. After all, as her trainer and boyfriend James Gray pointed out, “The end result of conflict at the worst level is physical violence.”

Cooper loves to fight. She lives for it. But she isn’t violent by nature or angry at the world. She doesn’t even fight angry. She has nothing to be angry about. Her dreams are coming true. She’s living her purpose. She sees herself as a scientist — a boxer turned mixed martial artist, a fresh-faced 24-year-old in love with a brutal sport and all of its emotions and complexities.

Cooper has been back home in mid-Michigan since the middle of March after six weeks as a cast member on the reality show “The Ultimate Fighter,” which airs at 10 p.m. Wednesdays on FS1. The winners of each season receive six-figure UFC contracts.

The fighters are housed in a Las Vegas mansion. They have no contact with the outside world. No phones, no internet, no iPods. Just conversation, old-school human interaction, training and fighting — against your housemates.

It is perhaps the model we’ll eventually have to follow to save civilization.

“God, I loved it,” said Cooper, known to those close to her by her middle name, Bobby. “I mean I wanted to talk to my boyfriend, my mom, my dad, whoever. But there would be times where we’re just in the living room, talking or in the hot tub or playing music together or just talking about good movies or something, and I’d say, ‘If we had our phones, you’d be in bed talking to your girlfriend. I’d be upstairs talking to my boyfriend. We wouldn’t be talking like this.’ We just shared stories. There was nothing to do but talk and interact and it was one of the coolest experiences of my life. These people I lived with in the house, I’ll never have another connection the way we had it. What we shared in the house was more just because we all we went through the same thing.”

Cooper fights on the show Wednesday night for the first time, an odd dynamic for her, with friends and family anticipating the episode and the possibilities while she adheres to a gag order until the show’s finale.

“You can’t say anything,” Cooper said last week at a coffee shop near where she trains at Gray’s facility in Brighton, Team SFS. “I can’t give out hints about who fought who. I just have to keep my mouth shut.”

I can report that, more than three months after the fight, she is in one piece, talking coherently. Her nose appearing to be in its original shape.

“It’s interesting now, because all my life every time I’ve fought, on fight day, I have family, friends, anyone I’ve ever met in my life messaging me, giving me inspiration,” she said. “I’m usually so focused on my fight, it’s ‘Thanks, goodbye.’ I can’t take in all the support. Now I can just take in all the support. It’s a different kind of excitement, because I’ve already done it. I don’t have to stress about the fight. My dad called me this morning and said the same thing, that it’s nice knowing it’s already done, because he doesn’t have to stress, too.”

Cooper’s father was her introduction to fighting. He and both of her older sisters were boxers. She became one, too, shortly after being paralyzed by anxiety as a sixth grader.

She fought Golden Gloves and appeared on the undercard of ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights” in 2013 at U.S. Cellular Park in Chicago. But most of her fights were regional. There weren’t that many other women boxing, and the settings for the fights often lacked energy. Her father suggested she try MMA.

Her first MMA fight: “I knocked that girl out in the second round. I had never stopped anyone in boxing before, so I got instantly obsessed with it,” Cooper said. “I had a smile on my face after the fight, I got interviewed, they were like, you were smiling the whole time. That was so much fun, the crowd was crazy, the lights. When I felt her .. you know, in boxing you’ve got head gear on, big gloves, I had those little tiny MMA gloves and I was on the ground … you can feel … I got super …”

She was hooked. And arrogant. And naive.

And she found this out as soon as she met Gray, at the suggestion of a promoter who told her she needed to really learn the sport if she wanted to continue.

Gray is accomplished in jiujitsu and MMA, but he is only 145 pounds.

“I was told he’s the best guy in Michigan,” Cooper said. “I met him, I shook his hand, I’m like, ‘You’re James Gray? I’m bigger than you are. I’m going to beat the (crap) out of you.’ My goal was to prove to this little man that he doesn’t know anything. He humbled me quite a bit.”

Cooper is not actually bigger than Gray. She’s 5-foot-3 and naturally just above 125 pounds. That’s the weight class in which she fought in the Invicta Fighting Championships, a women’s MMA circuit that’s viewed as feeder to UFC.

“That was my dream, I wanted to fight for that all-women’s league,” Cooper said. “I watched it on TV. I loved it. I wanted to be part of the Invicta crew.”

Invicta had signed her after her first pro MMA fight. It was a massive break. But short-lived. She lost last September, her first bout since knee surgery kept her from fighting for more than a year.

“I thought, ‘Oh, man, where am I going to go?’” Cooper said. “‘I waited years for this and I lost at 125.’”

A couple months later, a friend from Invicta told her about tryouts for “The Ultimate Fighter” at 115 pounds. That became her new fighting weight.

The process to get on show, at the beginning, is not all that different from most reality shows. Many show up with big dreams and the initial evaluations are short — in this case, two minutes of grappling, a couple minutes hitting the mitts, and then interviews for the chosen few.

“If you’re exciting (as a fighter) and you move, that’s what they want, that you’re trying stuff,” Cooper said. “I can nail an interview. How hard is that?”

She did apparently. Or well enough to be called back for an elimination bout, which she won for her place in the house — and six weeks with every aspect of her life subject to a camera and an interview. It can be easy to share too much of your life.

“I worried (about that),” said Cooper, who lives in Fowlerville. “I watched the other seasons, so I knew if there was a little bit of drama, they’re going to put that in there. It’s not their goal. Their goal isn’t to find drama and put it all over. But if something happens, if Person A is crying in the bathroom, they’re going to talk to Person A. I knew I didn’t have much to worry about. Just be yourself. Don’t put anything out there you don’t want people to know about. I was excited. I wanted people to see my life.”

They’re seeing the best of her, she thinks. As a fighter, too.

“I think I was a better person in the house, because you only have to focus on yourself,” Cooper said. “I didn’t have to take care of my dogs, I didn’t have to teach private lessons, I didn’t have to be at the gym for six hours. I only had to focus on me. You come home and nap so you can train at night. You eat well. You go to bed at a good time. You’re not sitting in the hot tub waiting for your fight. You were treated like a king. You got a list and you wrote down whatever (food) you wanted and the next day it was in your cupboard. Whatever you wanted. I found out a lot about myself. I rely on my boyfriend a lot for support — when I’m cutting weight, when I’m stressed, when I’m training, it’s a lot with him. So I found a lot of strength in myself to take care of myself, to take care of my body, to take care of my mental state.”

Whatever happened — or happens — tonight and in the coming weeks, Cooper’s chances at UFC aren’t limited to winning “The Ultimate Fighter.”

“The sport that we’re in is also an entertainment business,” she said. “If they like you, if you’re interesting, if you have a lot to say, if you talk well on camera, they like people like that. You may lose your fights, but if you’re exciting, if people want to see you fight, UFC will call you back for a fight.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean big money. Women in UFC often make about $15,000 a fight, fighting about three times a year, Cooper said. Much of that money is committed to expenses before it arrives. Sponsorship is a fighter’s best bet to pad their income, though UFC’s exclusive deal with Reebok limits those opportunities.

Cooper’s addiction to MMA is less about money or fame than it is reaching the pinnacle of her sport.

“If someone’s laying on top of you about to beat you, it’s everything you have to get on top to win,” Cooper said. “When your hand’s raised, it’s a weird emotion where you can’t fake it. So much happiness.

“You gave it everything. In the fight, there are doubts. When someone’s on top of you, it’s a lot easier to just cover up and be done. But you’ve got to open your face up to get out, you’re accepting that you could be beat right now, but you want to get out. It’s an incredible feeling of giving everything you have. Every person you’ve met has helped you get to this point in this fight.”

Including a classmate 13 years ago who tapped into her insecurities.

“Bobby is very sarcastic. But things a lot of people don’t see is she’s super sweet and loving and caring,” Gray said. “She’s very family oriented. People might stereotype fighters to being cold. She’s the opposite. Her family is the world to her. Past that shell, that sarcastic front that most people encounter is a very sweet, loving girl.”

Graham Couch can be reached at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

The Ultimate Fighter

When: 10 p.m. Wednesdays

Channel: FS1 (Lansing Comcast Ch. 223)

More on Cooper: Read Couch’s Q&A with Cooper here and Cooper's blog here. Follow her on Twitter here.