Julie Kitchen steps out of retirement!

Julie Kitchen

Julie Kitchen didn’t rise to become “The Queen of Muay Thai” the way professional fighters do. She wasn’t pounding away at heavy bags and doing punishing sparring partners from the ripe age of five. For her, martial arts began as simply a way to shed weight after giving birth to her twin daughters at the age of twenty-three. She may not have foreseen 14 World Championships in her future at the time, but life is full of surprises, and now she’s ready to come out retirement and hop back into the ring.

Kitchen’s fight, which will pit her against her fellow Muay Thai champ Lindsay Haycraft, will be the first in a series of upcoming Muay Thai matches hosted and sponsored by Awakening Fighters, which focuses on promoting and raising awareness of full-contact female fighters. Kitchen and Haycraft’s fight will be the first bout in the organization’s first major event, Awakening One: International Female Muay Thai. Other fighters to participate in the event will be announced in the coming months.

Awakening Fighters is currently holding a Kickstarter campaign to help facilitate the event. Be sure to stop in to the official Kickstarter page to pitch in. For more information on the upcoming fights, be sure to visit Awakening Fighters official website and Facebook page

Brad Curran

From the earliest days of childhood, Brad Curran was utterly fascinated by martial arts, his passion only growing stronger after spending time living in the melting pot of Asian cultures that is Hawaii. His early exposure developed into a lifelong passion and fascination with all forms of martial arts and tremendous passion for action and martial arts films. He would go on to take a number of different martial arts forms, including Shaolin Ch'uan fa, Taekwondo, Shotokan Karate and remains a devoted student, avid and eager to continue his martial arts studies. Brad is also an aspiring writer and deeply desires to share his love for martial arts and martial arts movies with the world!