Tracy Cortez: The Girl Who Doesn’t Fight Her Ghosts.

Being a professional fighter is perhapd one of the most dangerous and elusive dreams one can have. Even more so, when this dream is somebody else’s.

A 30-year-old Tracy Cortez is making her way towards the iconic UFC octagon. Right before reaching the cage, the athlete stops, passes final checks, and says “goodbye” to her cornermen — despite spending several weeks preparing alongside their teammates, every fighter enters the octagon alone. This, by itself, is symbolic: after all, the ring is supposed to be the loneliest place in the world. However, I’m not too sure if this saying is as true in the case of Tracy Cortez.

The girl takes off the branded Venum jacket and for the first time the audience can see the tattoos on her arm: roses with a geometric pattern, and two portraits — her late brother and mom. Despite their lives having been tragically interrupted by cancer, it feels like both are still with her, even if only like this — forever ingrained in the layers of the young woman’s skin.

And this, too, is symbolic. Because Tracy Cortez is the rare case where an athlete isn’t entering the octagon to fight the ghosts of their past. Quite the opposite — she’s there to fight alongside them.

Tracy’s mom was the only person who wholeheartedly supported the girl’s every aspiration, and never gave up on her, even when the rest of the family practically disowned Cortez during one of the hardest periods of her life. Unfortunately, the woman passed before she could ever witness her daughter make her professional MMA debut.

As for Tracy’s older brother — Jose — his impact on the career of one of the WMMA’s rising stars has been even more crucial: Jose was the one who originally introduced Cortez to combat sports. The young woman’s first recollections of MMA are those of her brother sparring in a boxing ring… Why a ring? Because the gym where Jose trained didn’t even have an MMA cage. The choice was simple: wrestling mats or the ring. This, however, didn’t at all impact the man’s ambitions of one day becoming a UFC fighter. Ambitions that were that much easier to commit to, due to the support of Jose’s friend and high school wrestling teammate, Henry Cejudo. That’s right — the same Henry Cejudo who went on to be the youngest American to ever earn an Olympic gold medal in freestyle wrestling, before becoming a UFC Champion in both Flyweight and Bantamweight divisions simultaneously. And the very same Henry Cejudo, who will play a pivotal role in the career of Tracy Cortez herself.

You see, unfortunately, Jose Cortez’s dream never came true — the young man passed in 2011 due to germ cell cancer. But it was the excruciating pain of this loss that had given his younger sister the conviction to start competing in MMA. So, after the initial period of working with Cejudo, Tracy crossed paths with Santino Defranco and the Fight Ready team. The team that ended up not only becoming Cortez’s new family but eventually helped fulfill her late brother’s dream that has now become her own: signing a contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Last week, the girl who doesn’t go into the ring to confront her ghosts but rather fights alongside them entered the cage against, arguably, one of the most talented female fighters to ever grace our sport - Rose Namajunas. Every aspect of the bout spelled disadvantage for Cortez: short-notice, at elevation, against a new opponent who’s infinitely more experienced. And, even though Cortez ended up losing the fight via unanimous decision, Tracy’s impressive performance left no room for shame in that defeat.

As for me (who is always skeptical of any attractive up-and-coming female fighter that enters our sport), I have seen enough to know that, given correct development, Tracy Cortez has a bright future in the UFC.

The future that, at last, will belong to her and her only.