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“I Have a Normal Life. I Just Beat People Up Also” Electrician, Mom, Bare-Knuckle Fighter: Jackie Cataline Gets Ready for BKB 61
Jackie Cataline has a day job, two teenage kids and another bare-knuckle fight coming up. What she doesn’t have? Much interest in researching the woman trying to knock her out. Cataline faces kickboxer Hatice Özyurt at BKB 61 on November 14 at indigo at The O2 in London.
In our exclusive interview, Cataline made clear that her preparation doesn’t involve spending hours watching her opponent. “Honestly, I don’t look up my opponents. I don’t know a thing about her,” she said. “I have no idea what she plans to do or what she’s good at.”
Her own plan takes considerably less explaining: “To go in and knock her out.” Özyurt brings a kickboxing foundation and experience in MMA. Her BKB debut ended in a third-round stoppage loss to Ashley Brace in September 2025. Cataline, meanwhile, enters after a split draw against Alexa Gracias in Los Angeles on July 18.
Jackie Cataline at BKB 61
For Cataline, the route to punching without gloves started on a wrestling mat. She said she began wrestling at 12, grew up with five brothers and two sisters, and had two parents who coached high school wrestling. She wrestled on the boys’ team before an invitation to train at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs helped launch her national-level career. Her run included the 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials, where she lost 9-3 to Victoria Francis in the 76kg challenge-tournament semifinals.
“I still wanted to compete. I just didn’t want to wrestle anymore,” Cataline said of retiring from wrestling after those trials. MMA, Power Slap and combat jiu-jitsu followed. Bare-knuckle boxing took a little more convincing: Cataline said she initially turned down a matchmaker before agreeing when he approached her again roughly a year later. “I’ve done everything else. Why not just try it and see if I like it?”
Now preparing for appearance No. 2, she is training with former BKB champion Mark Irwin, who will corner her in London. She sees an opening to put those years of wrestling to work without shooting for a takedown. “I like that there’s clinching in BKB. That’s super helpful for me because I have a pretty strong tie-up just from wrestling for so long.”
Away from competition, Cataline works as an electrician and helps at wrestling practices for her 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter. Television barely gets a look-in. “I have a normal life. I just beat people up also,” she joked. That workday attitude carries into fighting, too. Asked about nerves, Cataline described competition as the enjoyable part after camp: “The training part should be the hard part. Stepping in there, that’s the fun part for me.”