PASS IT ON

She was one of the golden girls of swimming in the 1990s, taking pride of place alongside Joscelin Yeo. Now May Ooi is back to dominate another sport.

The former national swimmer has swapped her goggles for a pair of boxing gloves as one of mixed martial arts start-up Rebel Fighting Championship’s (Rebel FC) latest signings. She earned a one-year contract for professional fights with the group in 2014, after she knocked out a much more experienced opponent at her first amateur fight.

In the show organised by Rebel FC at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in 2013, she was up against Australian Amy Adam, who had four professional fights under her belt. But those fights counted for little when May twisted her opponent into a rear-naked choke in the third round and forced her to concede.

May’s interest in martial arts was stoked in 2009 when she picked up Capoeira, a Brazilian discipline which disguises its strikes through dance. Although she showed a knack for it and was encouraged to fight professionally, she was wary about diving head-first again into a competitive sport.

“I retired from swimming because I wanted a normal life,” she says. “I wanted to be able to stay up until 2am and be cool about it, not freak out because I had to wake up in four hours to go and train.”

A self-confessed “sore loser” when she was young, she was only nine years old at her first formal swim meet. Her ferocious determination to win propelled her to early success at regional meets. At 13, she broke her ankle and could not swim for months. But she recovered to make her mark at the SEA Games, winning multiple gold medals. She also gained experience at the Asian Games before reaching the pinnacle of her career when she represented Singapore at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

By 2001, after 15 years in the pool, she decided to pursue a medical degree at Prague’s Charles University. “My body had done so much for me, so I needed to understand how it works,” she says. After she picked up Capoeira, she delved into other martial arts, such as jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai.

But it wasn’t until a chance meeting in 2013 with Brazilian jiu-jitsu exponent Royler Gracie that she decided to take part in a fight. Soon opportunity knocked in the form of the Indoor Stadium fight, and she was right back where she had left off.

Apart from competing herself, May, who co-owns the Brazilian Fight Club at Bukit Timah’s Horse City, teaches children and adults martial arts. “There’s a sense of satisfaction when I see them, especially the little girls, learn skills they can use to defend themselves if they need to,” she says.

She also hopes to encourage young girls to see that “you can be fit, strong and feminine.” You don’t have to “look like a stick to be beautiful”, she stresses. One of her prized possessions — on display at her club — is a photograph of a girl copying her pose during a fight.

Asked about the essence of the message she wants to pass on, she says, “Running this school and doing martial arts at the same time, I feel like I’m in a position where I can tell the younger generation to follow their passion and live their dreams, because I’m doing it. They can see it unfolding before their eyes.”