Stepping out of the car, Tatum Momo’a nervously straightened her shirt and took one last sip from her Diet Dr. Pepper to wet her dry mouth. She wasn’t used to this part of being in the public eye, though she tried to give off the impression that it was a piece of cake. Doing interviews and podcasts and promotional spots still gave her a flutter of nervous energy. The Pretty Left Hook podcast had just gotten signed to I Heart Radio and she was to be one of their first interviews with their bigger platform. It was still a small audience but…
It was one thing to get in the cage or pose for a photo, it was something else to try to articulate her own thoughts into something that didn’t humiliate her in front of thousands of MMA fans world wild.
On the elevator ride up, she couldn’t stop tapping her nails against her thigh, nervously adjusting her hair and second guessing her outfit. Which was stupid, she acknowledged, because she was going to be on radio and no one would even have a clue what she was wearing.
Brushing her dark hair back from her face one last time, she hesitantly opened the door with the words Pretty Left Hook embossed on the front.
It wasn’t what she was expecting.
The walls were painted a deep shade of purple and plush chairs surrounded the U-shaped desk where she’d be recording with the show’s founder and host, Hennessy Kole. The woman herself was perched on the edge of the desk, reading over the show notes as Tatum entered. Looking up, she graced her with a wide smile.
“Heyyyyy, girl!” she crowed, wrapping Tatum up in an unexpected hug. She was definitely not what Tatum had been expecting. She was warm, bubbly and clearly didn’t take herself too seriously. She’d been expecting perhaps a more clinical, cold environment.
“Ok,” Hennessy powered on, “I’ve got a loose list of the questions I’m going to ask you and if you wanna take a sec to look over them, just let me know if there’s anything you ain’t comfortable with. We on a thirty second delay so if the conversation ever goes somewhere you ain’t comfortable with, let me know.”
Tatum sank into one of the plush chairs and glanced over the list. Everything felt a little more comfortable with Hennessy in the room. She projected a down to earth aura that instantly set Tatum at ease.
After she’d okay’ed the list of questions, Hennessy explained the entire process to her and the two women adjusted their headsets and mics.
“What’s up, y’all! My name Hennessy and you listening to the Pretty Left Hook podcast bringing y’all the best tea out MMA and wrestling. I’m sitting with Tatum Momo’a right now and y’alllllll… tell me why she so much prettier in person? I’m dying.”
Tatum laughed, instantly at ease with the young woman.
“So, Tay… we gonna come in hard AF with this first question. How you feel about your brother dating the girl you took an L too? Be serious now!”
Tatum nearly choked on her water as she sputtered a laugh. She hadn’t been joking about coming in on fire, “I’m honestly okay with it. Jojo is a great fighter and I think by now I’ve made up for that loss. Zion dates who he wants to date and I don’t really get all involved in his love life unless I’ve got a reason to be worried. He’s grown. I’m just happy as long as he’s happy, you know?”
“I get that, I get that…” Hennessy adjusted her microphone. “He’s in Union with you now, what’s it like to not have your brother in your corner anymore?”
Tatum took a quick sip of her water. “I’ll be honest, it’s a little sad. I rely on my brother probably more than I should buuuuut, I’m happy that he’s living his dreams and getting in the cage where he belongs. He’s an awesome athlete… but I [i]am[/i] pretty happy he’s not in my weight class! I don’t want to get embarrassed by my own brother!”
The blonde laughed, brushing her hair out of her face with her colorful stiletto nails. “Aight, so… some people might feel like you came out of nowhere. Tell us a little bit about what you were doing before MMA.”
“Honestly, I was just being a mom,” Tatum said earnestly. “I had dreams and ambitions that I kind of touched on here and there but my daughter was my biggest concern. I had to make sure she was straight before all else. I actually trained at RISE to be a wrestler and did a little training with a good friend up in Russia but… then I had some custody issues come up with my daughter’s father and just a lot of hammering out those details. Along the way while I was taking a break, I kind of just fell in love with MMA. Zion has always been into it and I started having more time to just sit down and watch with him and I immediately knew that wrestling hadn’t clicked with me as much as I’d thought it would because my passion was elsewhere. Instead of immediately going back into wrestling, I just took some time and laid low, training with my brother and some friends of his until I felt like I was ready.”
“From what I can see you rockin that mama thing, girl. I saw where you said on Twitter that you and your brother don’t let no one meet her until y’all a sure thing in relationships and I respect the hell out of that.”
Talking about her daughter always brought a smile to Tatum’s face, “Yeah, she’s my everything. We talked about it once she started getting old enough to really understand what was going on in the world and we didn’t want her to get close or attached to someone until we knew she wouldn’t have to go through losing them.”
Hennessy smiled, “I love that. Speaking of your daughter… is it okay to ask what the deal is with your baby father? Seems like there’s some tension there…”
Tatum fidgeted with her water bottle. “A little. We’re trying to reach a good place in our relationship so that we can co-parent but it’s hard because there’s some bad blood there. But we try not to let our daughter see that tension between us. I can’t speak on what he does but for me, I don’t speak bad on him in front of her, I don’t want her to grow up not having that relationship with him unless it becomes detrimental to her. But for all the tension between the two of us they have a good relationship which is all I could ask for.”
The two women chatted for a few more minutes about motherhood and Tatum’s private life before Hennessy switched gears, “Okay, boo… let’s get into the nitty gritty. How it feel to have three fights behind you and already be ranked in the top ten of Union’s lightweight division?”
Tatum’s cheeks flush as she grins, “Honestly, it’s beyond belief. I’m so blessed to have had the opportunities that I’ve gotten and to be where I am. I was surprised to see that I’d shot up to number seven so quickly, honestly. I wasn’t expecting it!”
“Girl, why not? You seen yourself out there? You be throwing them fists like canned hams!”
Both women laugh as Tatum takes a sip of her water. “One of my mentors Aurora Jansen keeps telling me that I’m way too hard on myself. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing, honestly.
When you expect 110% [i]more[/i] out of yourself than anyone else does then you’re always pushing and always grinding. My biggest competition is myself… I just want to be better than I was yesterday and even better than I was last week.”
“Wise as shit, boo. I’m sure errybody ask you this but who you looking forward to fighting in your division? Anybody you got eyes on?”
Tatum laughed, “I mean, the obvious answer is Hanako Takeuchi. Not only is she the champion but she’s also 6-1. You don’t get that kind of record without being an amazing fighter. But honestly I would love to find myself standing across the cage from Zari Aliyah one day. Not only is she a huge talent in the cage but I respect the way she carries herself with such class. I’d love to be able to test myself with her. I think she’d be a huge challenge.”
“She does a lot for the culture too. You can’t help but appreciate the hell out of that. That fundraiser that she did for Flint was class.”
Tatum nods, “She’s a huge inspiration. You can talk all you want but she walks the walk and I respect it a lot.”
“I saw recently she was calling for more black women in the sport and I agree. 2019 is the year of exposure for us. It’s nice to be a little black girl or brown girl and turn on the TV and see someone who looks like you lookin back. Is that something you think about now that you have a platform?”
Tatum nodded, “You can’t help but think about it. Growing up, I [i]never[/i] saw anyone who looked like me on television or in magazines. I mean, when you’re mixed race that’s pretty… par for the course. I’m black on my mother’s side with a little bit of Japanese in there and Samoan and Filipino on my dad’s side. So obviously, I’m never going to see someone who looks exactly like me but it’s nice to see more women of color in places that they weren’t when I was a kid. If one little girl of color can see me on TV and feel just a little bit more comfortable in their skin and what they want to do with their lives then I’ll feel like my career has meant something.”
“And there’s so much that goes with being mixed race. Did you ever feel like you didn’t fit in with either culture?”
Tatum considered the question carefully, “Sometimes. We grew up in a very small village in Hawaii and my mom passed away when I was a kid. There weren’t a lot of black people where we lived… almost everyone is Samoan or Pacific Islander. So they looked more like my dad than me or my brothers. So unfortunately I didn’t see a ton of diversity while I was growing up and it made me feel a little out of place. Always a little darker than everyone else. My hair didn’t lay the same way. When I turned to the media to see people like me all I saw was a sea of white faces. It’s part of why I was so thrilled to move my daughter to Los Angeles. She’s exposed to so many new things and cultures and people and I love that.”
The two women talk a little bit more about their pasts and growing up a woman of color before Hennessy transitions them back to Tatum’s career.
“And speakin on people you respect in MMA, who would you say is your biggest inspiration? And you can’t say Zion! Or Byron!”
Tatum laughed, “Well, of course those two inspire me on the daily to be a better sister, a better girlfriend and a better all around person as well as in the cage. But honestly, I’ve been watching Union with my brother from day one. The person I’ve honestly thought of as a huge inspiration from day one is Donnie Calabrese. He took loss after loss after loss and where most people would just give up, Donnie just trained harder. Fought harder. I can completely respect that. It feels horrible to take that L and it’s so easy to just throw up your hands and give up. Donnie didn’t do that. There were so many times during training where I second guessed myself. Things were hard and they were only going to get harder and I wondered if I’d made the right choice. There were days I’d drag myself home and want to just give up. But Donnie never gave up. Every fight he went out there and fought his hardest until it started paying off. It reminds me that it’s important to keep hustling no matter how hard it feels.”
“The come up don’t always come easy,” Hennessy said as she took a sip of her own water.
“Sometimes you gotta hurt for that win. I know that’s right.”
She paused to check the time on her Apple watch. “Aight, we close to being done so I got one last question for you. What’s next for you, Tay? Whatchu got waiting in the wings right now?”
Tatum smiled mischievously, “A lot, honestly. Most of it, I can’t talk about right now, though.”
Hennessy groaned, “I thought we’d made a connection here, boo. We was friends. You gonna do me like that?”
Tatum laughed, “I wish I could tell you everything but you know what they say, move in silence. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now and I’m blessed to have a lot on my plate. Opportunities that I never saw coming… and I’m thankful for them. But for now, you’ll just have to be surprised right along with everyone else.”
Yikes. Love life under the microscope. Is this what it's like to be famous?