Former MMA Fighter Sharice Davids Has Been Elected To Congress

U.S. politics and MMA rarely overlap, but they did tonight when Kansas’ Sharice Davids was elected to Congress.

Davids went 5-1 as an amateur and 1-1 as a professional fighter, though she hasn’t fought since 2014. She also tried out for The Ultimate Fighter 20, and although she submitted Nina Ansaroff (who currently fights in the UFC), she didn’t make the final cut for the show. According to an interview with MMAFighting.com, she’s trained martial arts for much of her life, starting with taekwondo and later moving on to karate, capoeira, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Civil rights activist and writer Shaun King shared a photo of Davids, celebrating her victory and showing admiration for her past as an MMA fighter.

On Tuesday night, Davids (a Democrat) defeated four-time incumbent Kevin Yoder (a Republican) to win Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District. Her victory is a milestone for multiple reasons — not only is it the first time a Democrat has won the seat in over a decade, but Davids (of the Ho-Chunk nation) and New Mexico’s newly elected Deb Haaland (of the Laguna Pueblo people) will be the first two Native American women in the US Congress, with Davids becoming the first openly gay Native American to serve. (Incidentally, Oklahoma’s Markwayne Mullin is also a former professional MMA fighter and one of the only two Native American congressmen currently serving.) Davids is also a 2009 graduate of Cornell Law School and was a White House Fellow in 2016.

The post Former MMA Fighter Sharice Davids Has Been Elected To Congress appeared first on Jiu-Jitsu Times.