Janai Kai Reflects On Martial Arts Background Helping Her Wrestling Transition

Janai Kai recently weighed in on how her background in martial arts aided in her start in wrestling. The MLW Women’s Featherweight Champion spoke with Fightful and you can see highlights below:

On her martial arts experience: “It started when I was six years old. I started in Taekwondo and I did that for seven years and I got my black belt. Then I took a little bit of a break after that, after all of the competitions and everything that I did and then I went back into martial arts and then Muay Thai and Dutch kickboxing. During that time I was looking to like fight professionally, but that didn’t work out either because my first fight, my opponent, he pulled out the week off and I cut 20 pounds and everything. It was terrible. I was like, ‘I don’t want to deal with this.’ That’s basically what my training, like my background is and for the like kickboxing and Muay Thai, I trained under Henry, who moved a little bit. He was located in Florida, Fort Lauderdale when he had his gym, I’m not sure if it’s still there. Then Jeff [Roofs], he’s really big in the [DMV] area. Big boxing coach, Muay Thai coach.”

On how it helped her learn to wrestle: “I definitely saw that the footwork part was easy, the ring positioning was easy for me. I think it’s because even in Taekwondo, you can’t go outside of like the lines and everything where you’re competing and then like being in a ring too when I’m sparring, I’m very used to just being like going in a circle and moving around in that way. So that was very easy for me. There was like other things too. I guess like adjusting to the kicks were a little bit difficult just like working the kicks in a way. But I spoke to different people and they told me, ‘Okay, here are the safe spots, you’re good. If you can lay it in, definitely lay it in, but here are the safe spots.’ So that’s how I was taught to really just do things safely. That was the other thing to just learning, like the selling part. It’s always hard. It’s hard in professional wrestling, you’re doing things that you’re just completely not used to in daily life. So those are the few things for me.”