OTHER VITALS
CAREER STATUS: Prospect
WALKOUT THEME: “Grave Digger” by Blues Saraceno
SPONSORS: N/A
FIGHTING STYLE
PRIMARY: Freestyle Wrestling
SECONDARY: Kickboxing
STANCE: South Paw
STRENGTHS
Dynamite Comes in Small Packages: A lifetime of wrestling training has made Taylor into a goddamn tank. Raw power is generally on Taylor’s side, especially for her size. Her takedowns are ridiculously powerful, and she’s developed considerable stand-up skills…so while she’s not exactly a knockout artist on the feet yet, she certainly has enough power to put someone down.
Grueling Pace: Taylor knows what she does best: push the action, back her opponent up with either strong hands, or that OTT double-leg shot. She only knows how to move forward, she only knows how to be aggressive in her fights.
Welcome to Hell: Taylor’s gameplan is pretty simple–get the fight to the floor, and ideally just pound her opponent out, but if she can submit them, great. If she’s on top of you, you’re in for a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG evening; her top control is just suffocating, and she’s not afraid to drop bombs from any position.
WEAKNESSES
Green Around the Gills: Through 7 amateur fights, Taylor’s barely spent one full round in the cage–she hasn’t really been tested, she hasn’t really been pushed, and her skills against the more talented fighters in her weight class aren’t clear.
Nitrous Burst: Nobody’s really certain how good Taylor’s cardio is, at least in terms of an MMA fight. She’s never spent more than 90 seconds in the cage at a time, so her explosiveness isn’t in question…but what happens if she goes into deep waters? Even she isn’t entirely sure.
Swing and a Miss: Taylor’s still adapting to stand-up fighting. She knows she’s powerful, and she tends to rely on it, so a lot of her punches are…less than technically sound. She still swings with all her might, trying to score a knockout, and disciplined strikers will have plenty of counter opportunities against her.
STATISTICAL INFORMATION
#1 Punches: 15
#2 Kicks: 10
#3 Clinch Striking: 5
#4 Clinch Grappling: 5
#5 Strength: 15
#6 Agility: 15
#7 Dodging: 17
#8 Takedowns: 18
#9 Takedown Defense: 5
#10 Heart: 15
#11 Ground & Pound: 15
#12 Ground Game: 15
#13 Submissions: 5
#14 Submission Defense: 5
#15 Conditioning: 14
#16 Toughness: 15
#17 Control: 13
#18 Aggressiveness: 13
#19 KO Resistance: 15
CONTRACT
4 FIGHTS – $300,000 (NON-EXCLUSIVE)
(0 FIGHTS LEFT)
CAREER EARNINGS: $3,210,000
ACCOLADES
CHAMPIONSHIPS: 0
N/A
HONORS: 0
N/A
FIGHT OF THE NIGHT: 2 (1 UGP | 1 RFC)
(RFC 3, UGP 68)
PERFORMANCE OF THE NIGHT: 2
(UGP 70, Boss Fight 58)
BACKSTORY
Taylor is loud, brash, and unapologetically into herself. There is no opponent she won’t believe she can fight, there’s no weight class she won’t volunteer to fight at, and there’s nothing that can be done to shake her confidence. At least, that’s what she wants you to think.
The oldest of the 3 kids of her generation, Taylor Webb was born in Denton, Texas, but only lived there for the first few months of her life before her family moved to nearby Euless. Her father was a wrestling coach, and influenced his oldest daughter to take up the sport at a young age–and while most people might see it as continuing the family tradition, Taylor was far from a natural at first. She was awkward, stumbled through practice, and not especially passionate about the sport at her early age. Her father kept encouraging her, though, and Taylor’s personal hard-headed nature spurred her to keep pushing forward.
The wrestling community being the tight knit group that it is, Taylor came to know virtually everyone at or around her weight–including future teammate Cathryn Ruthledge, although the two began as rivals, competing for different clubs and frequently having to beat one another for a place on the podium. Over time, the rivalry waned, particularly as the two separated in weight, and they became friends and, eventually, teammates at Trinity High, where Taylor placed at 2 of the 3 State Championships she qualified for, but wasn’t able to win either of them.
In contrast to her friend, Taylor did take up wrestling at a collegiate level, attending Oklahoma City University. She would earn All-American status 3 of her 4 years, win 2 SAC Conference Championships, and finally win the NAIA National Championship in her senior year, before graduating with a degree in graphic design.
Rather than jump into the business world, however, Taylor was drawn to MMA by her old teammate, who reached out to explain she was fighting. Taylor made the trip from Oklahoma City to Dallas to see Cathryn’s first fight, and she got hooked–but didn’t start actually training until after graduation, due to her wrestling commitments. Once she could train, though, she did–she joined Cathryn at Donald Cerrone’s BMF Ranch, and began specifically training Muay Thai to prepare her to fight. Her style was…awkward, at best, but with the encouragement of her coaches and her long-time friend, she took an amateur fight to test the waters–and absolutely blitzed through it, finishing the fight in less than a minute by TKO.
That became a pattern for her–Taylor took a series of amateur fights, one after the other after the other, and followed the same gameplan in each: a few basic strikes, powerful double-leg shot, ground and pound for a victory. She racked up 6 victories in less than 5 minutes in the cage through this plan, before suffering her first real obstacle in MMA: a crushing knockout loss, when an opponent timed her shot perfectly and head kicked her into oblivion. That was her last amateur fight, before her trainers and teammates told her she should consider going pro, and the young Texan stepped back from competition in order to prepare for the step up that will be the pro ranks.
She would turn pro by joining AWC’s budding Strawweight division, where she would win her debut fight against Magdalena Moruga with a submission in the third round. However, before her career could progress further, AWC ran into financial difficulties and stopped running shows. Taylor would initially consider signing with Union GP’s Everest branch, but her own ego told her she was beyond needing to be developed.
