Sherilyn Lim, and ONE FC's search for a female star Singapore can call its own

If Sherilyn Lim goes walking down a different street that day, maybe her whole life heads off in another direction.

Maybe she goes to work like any other day. Maybe she doesn’t bump into the coach from her old gym. Maybe he doesn’t say out loud what she’s only been thinking, and in the end, maybe ONE FC is still searching for a female star its Singaporean fans can rally around.

We’ll probably never know, and the 22-year-old Lim isn’t sure she cares to. All the Singapore native is sure of is that if she doesn’t run into Fight G gym owner Darren de Silva right then, she doesn’t end up on the organization’s Oct. 18 fight card, “ONE FC 11: Total Domination.” Worse than that, she might have ended up stuck in a life she didn’t want, a life too much like the one she’d tried so hard to shed.

“I grew up a fat kid,” Lim told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “I was really, really fat and out of shape.”

She tried playing sports, but local favorites like table tennis didn’t exactly provide a great workout. In school at Singapore Polytechnic, Lim discovered muay Thai kickboxing.

“Initially, it was just a weight loss thing,” Lim said. “I wanted to lose weight. It was also that, it’s a martial art. In the event that I might need to use it for self-defense, I have that option. If I could lose weight and learn something useful, why not?”

But once school was over, Lim found herself scrambling between jobs, trying to scratch out a living in advertising while also working as a bartender. The balancing act was starting to wear her thin, and de Silva, who had trained Lim briefly at his Fight G MMA Academy, could see it on her face in the street that day.

“She was always part of the gym, but then she was working, she was busy,” de Silva said. “But I bumped into her on the street near the gym. I told her, ‘Why don’t you come back and train? You look stressed out.’”

De Silva was right, and Lim knew it. So she took her coach’s advice. She returned to training, rediscovered her love of martial arts, and now, after a handful of muay Thai and amateur MMA fights, is finally ready to turn pro when she takes on Malaysia’s Ann Osman on Oct. 18.

But this is where the story takes a bit of a turn, since as far as ONE FC is concerned, Lim isn’t just another debuting fighter who may or may not pan out in the long run. Instead, she’s a potential star – and one whom Asia’s leading MMA promotion could certainly use right about now.

In two years of operations, ONE FC has had just one women’s MMA bout. That came in March 2012, when local Sinaporean favorite Nicole Chua submitted India’s Jeet Toshi. Since then, Chua has been sidelined with injuries, according to ONE FC CEO Victor Cui, but that hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm for women’s MMA in Singapore.

“Ever since Nicole fought, I’ve been asked, when is another Singaporean woman going to fight for us?” Cui said. “That first fight was received really well.”

So well, in fact, that Singaporean fans are hungry for more, and there’s a whole slew of cultural reasons why, according to Cui.

“Singapore is a much more progressive country compared to some of its neighbors,” Cui explained. “They like to lead, to be in front of the rest of the region. Singapore is a leader in Asia in a lot of ways, from banking to equality to opportunity in the work force to sports. Female CEOs. Female business leaders. I think it’s much more common in Singapore than in other Asian countries.”

It’s also why, according to Lim, her decision to pursue a career as a fighter is much more accepted in the Singapore of today than it would have been even a few years ago.

“There’s a more traditional mindset with regards to women here, but I think it’s changing because there are way more women in the workforce now,” Lim said. “It used to be that it was all the men. They were the ones bringing the money home. But now women in Singapore are not just educated, but contributing to the workforce. They’re also the ones bringing home money for their household. I think that’s when these attitudes started to change.”

When she told her family she was going to fight professionally, Lim said, “The initial reaction, thankfully, was, ‘Can we go and watch?’ I was really relieved.”

That said, there are still the occasionally odd questions from local reporters, some of whom seem a little too caught up in finding out whether Lim owns any dresses or knows how to apply lipstick.

“I expected that,” Lim said. “There’s a stereotype that women should not be competing in combat sports, or anything, for that matter. But we’re definitely drifting away from that old-school thinking where women are supposed to be only housewives, taking care of kids. It’s shifting away from that because there are more women working and having kids. It’s the same thing with fighting. People are now getting excited about watching women fight in Singapore.”

That’s where Cui and ONE FC come in. But promoting women’s MMA in Asia isn’t quite as simple as it is in North America.

For one thing, Cui said, they’re limited somewhat in potential matchups since the sport is at different levels of development in different Asian nations. There also aren’t enough female fighters in Asia to fill out larger weight classes, such as the 135-pound division that has led the charge for women’s MMA in the UFC.

“There’s also different political and cultural sensitivities that you have to be aware of,” Cui said. “For example, if you had a female fight in Indonesia, you’d have to be concerned with what they’re going to wear when they compete. It’s a Muslim country. They’ve never had a female fight in Indonesia. Those are the different factors you have to consider.”

That’s one of the reasons Lim wasn’t considered for ONE FC’s Sept. 13 fight card in Jakarta. The other, of course, is that ONE FC isn’t just searching for any female fighter. It wants a local woman, someone who will excite the fan base at home in Singapore.

It also doesn’t hurt to match her up with a Malaysian opponent, Cui said, since the two countries share a strong rivalry “in everything from business to sports, and that strikes a chord with a lot of people here.”

That’s sort of what ONE FC hoped it had with Chua.

“The stadium went crazy when she won,” Cui said. “I was really surprised the support that she got. I can already see that Sherilyn is getting some of that. All the major newspapers here have picked her up, from English to Chinese. Unless you’re football, as in soccer, you usually don’t get picked up in both English and Chinese newspapers.”

That might be a heavy burden for a 22-year-old with no pro fights to her credit, but that’s the situation Lim finds herself in. While there might be a nascent hunger for women’s MMA in the region, so far demand has outstripped supply. If she’s going to help change that, she’ll have to leap straight on to Asia’s biggest MMA stage to do it. It’s a lot to ask of anyone, Lim’s coach admitted.

“But I think the opportunity is there,” de Silva said. “I think – well, I know – that if she didn’t take this opportunity, she’d always be wondering, ‘What if I did?’”

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