EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

“The fight life is so fantastic,” Ilima Lei-Macfarlane explains breathlessly, while describing her incompetence at buying outfits for grand occasions (the 28-year-old Bellator flyweight champion has been shortlisted in the Female Fighter of the Year category in the World MMA Awards in Las Vegas next week) and she relates how, seven months after being crowned as the inaugural women's flyweight champion in North America, she has a new Jeep, having spent her adult life driving "shitty cars off of Craigslist".

The physical Hawaiian fighter has even more pressing matters on Friday night, notably the first defence of her flyweight crown at Pechanga Casino Resort, a Native American Indian reservation in Temecula a 60-minute drive from her base in San Diego, California, where she also studied at college.

In many ways, the lady known as "Iliminator' is a diverse fighting academic, having finished University with a bachelor's degree in Cultural Anthropology followed by a Masters Degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

After attending Punahou High School, Honolulu, becoming an ex-alumnus of acclaim alongside former US President Barack Obama and golf prodigy Michelle Wie - for whom it was also Alma Mater - Ilima lived and partied hard as a college student before discovering her skills in the fight arts, after a decision to get fit again. She is now a blend of brain and brawn.