Sonya Deville Quotes

To go from hit-and-miss promotions barely taking women's fighting seriously to women headlining on a regular basis, high-level fights, it's an amazing thing to see. And it happened in what I felt was a pretty quick succession - though not fast enough - as far as professional sports go. It's really exciting.

Regardless if I made it or not, I really wanted women's MMA to be a real thing.

Women's MMA has come a really long way. People look forward to us fighting, and they get excited.

Ronda Rousey, arguably... I mean, she might've been the one that actually started the whole 'Divas Revolution' by being so awesome in UFC.

I'm a woman who's been in a man's sport since the age of 15, and to see people finally seeing what I saw right from the start, that female fighters are just as good 'pound-for-pound' as our male counterparts.

I think we've broken a lot of barriers and kind of shattered our glass ceiling that was there for women. There are so many great fighters, and we've proved a lot of people wrong. A lot of the times, our fights are the best fights on the card.

People will say, 'Who are your role models, and who are your pioneers?' And the first person that comes to my mind is Billie Jean King because we didn't have women that we could watch when I was growing up.

Jess Ennis, Chrissie Ohuruogu, Vicky Pendleton and Laura Trott, to name a few, have acted as female role models in England.

Women's combat sports have been on a good run in the United States. Claressa Shields won a gold medal in women's boxing at the London Olympics in 2012, when it became a medal sport. American women won medals in taekwondo and judo as well.

You can have a fight card full of male fights, but yet when that women's fight comes on, that's what people watch. They're super excited by it.

I fight for the women. I try to do my best inside the Octagon to fight like a man; then, people will respect girls in the Octagon.

Simply stated, girls want role models and mentors.

Raising three girls, I think it's important to teach them to support other women.

I'm getting a lot of roles as women who are very powerful. I think that's a reflection of me as a person.

When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players.

When I was growing up, there were very few women athletes. I remember watching Olga Corbett, but Peggy Fleming and Janet Lynn were my role models. I never dreamt that I could be at that level. I remember thinking they seemed so elegant and regal and powerful and feminine.

I've had some very strong female role models, so I think that's an important thing.

Growing up, I looked up to major league baseball players, and now these young women have amazing, incredible women all across the board, from swimming to gymnastics to softball to basketball. It is incredible how far women have come and women in sports have come.

I think that we need women role models everywhere. I think that it's really hard to imagine yourself as something that you don't see.

I try to never lose sight of what a special time it is to be a women's basketball player.

I'm a woman specialist now. I'm going around the world to challenge all the woman champions. England, France, Czechoslovakia, everywhere.

It's wonderful that we're portraying women in this way so that young women can see that women actually are strong and capable of accomplishing all kinds of things.

In the United States, female fisticuffs were marginalized, first as erotic vaudeville in the 19th century and later as serious competition developed in the first half of the 20th. Legal wars waged by boxers in the 1960s and '70s won women the right to compete professionally nationwide.

I never really thought about the fact that there weren't female role models, because I had them in my life. The women I knew in my life were so strong.

As we've seen time and again, women and girls who are out there working, they are truly force multipliers, spreading opportunity through their families and communities - and not just by creating programs and nonprofit organizations, not just by hiring other women, but also by serving as role models themselves.