From Thai jungles to the gridiron, Tai Emery's journey toward BKFC gold is like no other
Fighter Tai Emery attends the Super RIZIN.3 media session on July 26, 2024, in Tokyo. (Photo by Jun Sato/WireImage)
(Jun Sato via Getty Images)
At a glance, you'd probably never think there's anything to the woman who flashed her breasts at an entire arena after delivering a devastating jab-to-uppercut first-round finish. You know what I'm talking about if you were a combat sports fan in late 2022. It was the rare bare-knuckle boxing viral moment that buzzed loud enough to reach mainstream media. But that's all it looked like: A substanceless five minutes of fame from an attention-seeking unknown. In reality, it was simply Tai Emery being Tai Emery.
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She's forged her own rules for 38 years.
Emery's win over Rung-Arun Khunchai marked her debut in BKFC, prompted conversations about fines ranging in the millions of Baht (Thailand's currency) — and was altogether one hell of a way to make a first impression to the combat world. Nearly three years later, after bare-knuckle detours in Japan and slap-fighting side roads in Dubai, Emery sits on the precipice of being able to call herself a champion. At BKFC 71 on Friday, Emery steps up to challenge BKFC's longtime strawweight titleholder, Britain Hart.
"For some people, it's like, 'I wanted to be the UFC champion.' But with these knuckles and just my life and what I've lived, I really feel like I truly am developed for this sport," Emery says. "I feel like somehow the universe has done everything, pulled every little thing. So the lead-up to the most special thing in my life, to me, this is my first child, you know? Other people are having babies. To me, getting this built is the same thing, where it's going to be this huge accomplishment."
A native New Zealander who was born in Queensland, Australia, before uprooting to Thailand and then Dubai, Emery has made it work through sheer perseverance in a way that defies the conventions of her unusual introduction to the combat masses. She slept on the mats when she first arrived at her old Thailand gym in 2020 before eventually upgrading to a mattress on the floor. It was like being a fish out of water — if that fish lived off a diet of a single rice cup and egg a day to get by. She recalls having only two pairs of training shorts, both of which she'd wash consistently for her two-a-day schedule, yet when the local cats urinate on your few pairs of clothes, the stench only magnifies a foreigner as an even larger sore thumb.
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Humbling, sure, but humbling was Emery's life in a nutshell. The roots for her unorthodox brand of toughness, the kind needed to thrive in a grisly sport like bare-knuckle boxing, were dug early.
"It took me until I was an adult to realize not everyone would have candles [for light sources] inside their house," she says. "Our electricity wasn't always on. It took me a long time to even click with that, because I was a kid. Growing up, you don't sense these things until you start to realize how other people live.
"I think it definitely allowed me to have the tools to survive in a fight world as well as ... level up, so to say, out of where I guess I was first born into. Then living in a Muay Thai gym in the jungle. Having nothing. No running water, no electricity, and just having crazy things kind of happen to me."
Whether metaphorically or physically, fighting has been Emery's life. The more her eyes viewed, the clearer her vision became, though she never truly anticipated the career path that awaited her.
Tai Emery challenges for the BKFC strawweight title in Dubai on Friday. (Photo via BKFC)
To hear her describe it, the first fighting experience Emery recalls was a "freakout" moment.
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When Emery was young, the others she hung out with called her "the freakout," because if pushed aggressively, she'd go a little crazy. Those instances began as early as primary school.
"They put a blanket over me, like you do at sleepovers. 'Murder in the dark,' and stuff like that," Emery remembers. "You're meant to hold it down and lift it up and sort of run in and run out. But when I ran in, they held it down, and all the boys started kicking me while I'm under this blanket.
"I just remember them thinking it was funny — then just losing it and bashing my way out."
Emery would never go out looking for a fight, she says. Whatever anger was bubbling inside of her would simply burst out when the moment called for it, "which I think that's probably better and unique."
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Any family support Emery received was from her sister. The two grew up in a broken home, arguably darker than they realized at the time, which strengthens Emery's mentality now. She can't imagine controlling her emotions had those environments not been all she'd known at one point or another.
"I've been able to completely change my life around, coming from nothing," says Emery. "No parents, [me] bringing my sister up. When I say it was probably an abusive household, it most definitely was.
"I think that's why the fighting has become even more important to me as a platform. Just because I can stand for something and show people that it really is our choices to be able to change things, definitely control things. I'm sure, like when I was training, a lot of things could have been triggers or different responses just because of the environment I grew up in, or lack of environment that I grew up in.
BKFC champion Britain Hart faces off with challenger Tai Emery. (Photo via BKFC)
"For a long time, I kind of tried to hide it or just keep it to yourself ... until I started to realize there's such strength in being able to talk about it. Maybe it makes other people feel uncomfortable, but for me, that was my norm.
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"It's a superpower," Emery continues. "Once I started realizing, I was like, 'Man, I'm fighting girls who come from white picket fences, never gone without a meal,' and once you realize there's these depths within your mind — you're fighting this person, and I've already conquered all these crazy things that this girl has never even imagined. The worst thing that's happened in her life was she had to ring her parents for money."
For nearly anyone in Emery's position as a child, fear would be a logical motivator or obstacle. That's never really been there though, as evidenced by her road after graduating from high school. While college is a normal societal progression to find a career, Emery simply didn't have the funds, so she became an electrician, working the trade for nearly a decade before getting back into sports.
Try as hard as they may, no opponent Emery faces in the ring surpasses the danger of electricity. It can't be seen, heard, smelled, you name it. Emery always knew what she was up against working in high voltage as one of the only women on her site. If the job didn't come with enough pressure, she says, co-workers wanted to see women fail; in some cases, she says, men would even try to sabotage their fellow workers to get them fired. But Emery earned her way and attributes her physical strength to the electrician field.
It took me until I was an adult to realize not everyone would have candles inside their house. Our electricity wasn't always on. It took me a long time to even click with that. Growing up, you don't sense these things until you start to realize how other people live.
That strength soon came in handy. Imagine reading a résumé that includes "electrician," "football player" and "fighter." Emery followed that sequence of professions. But there's a catch.
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The Aussie went from an electrician to a semi-pro football player — for the Lingerie Football League.
What sounds like the weirdest batch of lies you'd hear on a crazy first date is all true because there's video proof. Emery was a star player for her team, and it was all by accident.
Living with her roommate at the time, a wide receiver in Mike Ditka's Legends Football League, Emery was invited purely because the team needed more players. Growing up, she played hundreds of flag football games and the sport wasn't totally lost on her, so Emery went down to practice one day and — essentially overnight — became a full-fledged athlete as the team's new running back.
"I just remember them busting the ball in my gut and then just charging through three girls, feeling like a million dollars, running for the score line," she says. "It was literally just my housemate being like, 'Hey, just come down. Give it a go.' She'd been asking for weeks.
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"Everything's kind of just fallen [into place] or [I've] winged it. I always have to listen to that gut instinct and I always listen to that little compass, and although I've had some crazy bad stuff happen, I've always had crazy good stuff happen, and that's always just because of how my mindset of how I take on that problem — always wanting to be the positive of it and always being myself in any given situation. Even if it's going to fluster people around me. I know eventually, everything just kind of flows."
Emery played semi-pro football for a year in Australia before coming to the United States and training at several NFL-level combine facilities. As you'd probably expect, participation in such endeavors attracts a certain type of attention.
"We were getting invited to Justin Bieber parties," Emery says. "All these crazy things. I didn't go because we had playoffs that same weekend — and I remember we lost that game, and I hated Justin Bieber for at least three years. It took me a long time to stop hating this poor guy for no reason. Just because he took my teammates and I'm here at home because I'm living overseas, sacrificing all this stuff. I don't give a s*** about Justin Bieber, I f***ing care about winning in the Super Bowl, b****.
"I got to go to Guatemala. I was the all-star defense tackler and I ended up being a captain over there as well. They had me do a media day, so two days of media day and they put us in a bulletproof car. I remember one of the girls freaking out just because someone was tracking us, and I kind of remember having to step up for her and breathe her through some stuff. But we soon realized why they put us in a bulletproof car. The highs of Justin Bieber and the lows of people trying to kill us. All for football. Really?"
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As fate would have it, Emery's travels eventually placed her in the path of Miesha Tate, the former UFC bantamweight champion who convinced the accidental football veteran that combat sports might be her true calling. But it wasn't until a planned vacation to Thailand and then Indonesia imploded mid-trip because of the COVID-19 pandemic that Emery's road truly crystallized in full.
She was at the Thai airport, ready to board her flight to Indonesia, when the world slowed to a crawl. Suddenly she was faced with an indefinite stay in a foreign land. So she headed back to the old mats in that Thai gym and cobbled together a new financial lifeline, seemingly from out of nowhere.
"It's just strange that it's kind of led to all of this," she marvels.
"And now, hey, obviously it was scary [early on], but now I've completely changed [my life], where I'm at this point where this scar is almost another weapon. We all know the scariest thing is a big heart and a deep mind. So if somebody wants to try and drag me to hell, baby girl, you ain't going nowhere."
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When you lay it all out, regardless of what anyone else has thought, Emery has marched to the beat of her own drum every step of the way. From her serendipitous start to her bare-knuckle infamy to slap fighting in Dubai, combat is only the latest chapter in Emery's journey. But it's also what she cares about most. Emery had been manifesting a BKFC title shot since gruesomely shattering Charisa Sigala's nose in a brutal knockout in Japan this past July. Now Emery gets her wish when she challenges Hart, the most dominant strawweight talent to emerge in the modern-day revival of bare-knuckle boxing.
To compete in the most violent variant of combat sports is aptly poetic for Emery. Nothing was ever meant to be easy, and the perpetually self-willed Aussie wouldn't have it any other way.
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