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LAS VEGAS – Some people go on vacation and visit historic sights or play a few rounds of golf. For her vacation, though, Cat Zingano traveled halfway around the world to learn a bit of Muay Thai boxing in the country where it originated and, despite zero experience, wound up taking a pro fight.



On Saturday, she'll face Miesha Tate on the main card of "The Ultimate Fighter Finale," with an opportunity to coach opposite UFC women's champion Ronda Rousey in the next season of TUF going to the winner.

The Mandalay Bay Events Center, where Zingano will meet Tate in the most important bout of her fighting career, is thousands of miles away and light years removed from the tiny, filthy gym in Thailand where Zingano unexpectedly took a professional Muay Thai fight last year.

Zingano, her husband, Maurice, and their son, Brayden, went to Thailand for vacation last summer. An All-American wrestler at Cumberland College and MacMurray College, Cat Zingano was going to teach a seminar on takedowns in jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts.

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She and her husband, a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, were given coupons for Muay Thai classes, which she eagerly snapped up.

"It was such a great opportunity, to learn Muay Thai in Thailand," she said. "I thought it would be so neat to see the whole ambiance of it. My husband, he was more into the vacation part of it. He was there to relax and have fun. But I had to take advantage of being in Muay Thai and learning about it there."

It wasn't like she went down to the local 24 Hour Fitness and took a class, though. She immersed herself into the training so deeply that her coach urged her to take a pro fight before she returned home. The surroundings should have told her this would not be the kind of fight she was used to taking, but Zingano is nothing if not adventurous.

She took the bout and now has a story for years to come.

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Her coach was smoking and drinking a beer as he wrapped her hands and prepared her for the fight. The dressing room was filled with bloodstains on the wall and looked like it had never been cleaned. The odor was nauseating.

"I'll bet if someone got murdered in there, you'd never find out who did it," she said, chuckling. "It was pretty gnarly. I didn't take off my sandals for the warm-up because of the floor. There was cigarettes all over and spit and blood and who knows what else. It smelled awful."

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