A Fighter, Or a Doctor?

By T. Fakhoury 

When kids have dreams, and they grow up to follow their dreams, these dreams may be to be a firefighter, a astronaut a pilot, or even to fight taekwondo, but some kids follow their parents dream of what they should become, they should become doctors, lawyers, engineers… Shi Ming is the Name of a Girl that was born in Heilongjiang, Province of China, as a young girl, all she wanted was to practice Taekwondo, play and enjoy her early life sine she was only 13 years old. However, her parents and Grandparents strictly made her focus more in school so that she one day could become a Docter just like her Grandfather. Years of school, hard studying and practicing martial arts later, Shi finally Graduated High School and went to study in the University of Tianjin in 2015, and got her Communication Engineering degree, over that time span, she always continued to practice martial arts and even transition to MMA, slowly she also began to compete in some small tournaments in China, and in the following years the progressively got better and she competed in many fights, all of this without her parents knowing about her fighting and her dream of being a fighter.
 
Shi Ming didn’t want to let her parents down, so she still pursued her career while fighting competitively, she decided to apply to the university of Purdue. Luckily for her, in 2020 she also got invited to the UFC, and became a fighter in the League, but due to Covid, fights where postponed and so on Shi Ming received her PhD. in 2022, her career was starting to grow even more, she finally became a specialized doctor, making her parents proud of her, while still keeping her dreams of fighting professionally alive. She continued to fight in the UFC and through 2022-2024, she was a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Department of ECE of The Ohio State University, becoming specialized in acupuncture, she then returned to her home and is now a full time doctor in a hospital in Yunnan Province, but she still fights for the UFC and all of this without her parents knowing about it.
 
Her story shows how women in the past where always told to become a doctor or a nurse, never told to follow their dreams, but she decided to follow and create a new opportunity not just for her but to the following years of Women in sports.