As the daughter of judoka Jo Gevers and good friend of Sanne van Dijke, it was inevitable that Lizzy Gevers (28) would end up in judo. She did indeed start as a judoka, but in the meantime she has other plans. She is now living her dream of becoming an MMA fighter. “I hit her two blue eyes and thought, wow this is cool!”
“Our dad had to get used to it,” says Gevers in the radio program De Zuidtribune on Sunday afternoon. Jo Gevers is a big name in the judo world. Lizzy’s father won three national titles and nine medals. It was almost inevitable that his daughter would continue that name in judo.
She chose differently and now Jo can also get used to it. “In one of my first matches he said that he thought it was all very violent. He said, ‘She can’t do any of it. She’s much too heavy on her legs.’ But now he’s proud of me.”
“It’s so cool to be a student of the sport again.”
Lizzy Gevers was a bit tired of judo. “I decided to quit Team NL, but what are you going to do then?” she wondered. “I went for a run and to the gym, but missed the contact sport. Just for fun, I started doing some MMA training at the gym in Oss, just twice a week.”
But top sport is simply in the nature of the beast. The amateur level was fun, but she soon needed more of a challenge. “Then my trainer asked if I wanted to do a competition sometime.”
“I thought: I just hit her!”
She did, but she had only been training for three months. “You can imagine that it hasn’t looked like it yet. I closed my eyes and immediately started slapping, but it was a bit like mowing around me wildly,” she laughs. When she opened her eyes and saw that she had hit her opponent two black eyes, she still got excited: “I thought: I just hit her. This is fat!”
MMA is a combination of all the different martial arts. “It’s so cool to be a student again and to develop yourself in different disciplines,” says Gevers.
As a result, her judo death has certainly not been in vain. “In the cage I can show that judo techniques are a good basis. And my dad really likes to see me use those techniques in the ring now.”
“I believe I will conquer the belt in the next two years.”
After that first amateur competition, she went all out for the new sport. She recently signed a contract with the American Professional Fighting League, one of the largest MMA leagues in the country.
“Two weeks ago I made my debut there. Unfortunately I lost that one split-decisionSo, jury decision, but I did put down a good pot.”
Sometime in the next two years, she hopes calls to conquer. “I believe that is possible. If it wasn’t for that, I would have been better off sitting on the couch with a pile of chips, as my dad would say.”