like martial arts in the assemblies and the talent shows." She dropped out of college to pursue martial arts full time, despite her 3.8 GPA her first year. "My life was martial arts, and I needed my college to be martial arts." She trained during the day, waited tables at night and took on a handful of modeling jobs to pay the bills. When she signed up to model for a bikini website, the owner informed her he gave all his models nicknames. She remembers telling him she did martial arts. "We'll call you the Karate Hottie," he told her. "It's so catchy." Waterson agreed. "Sure," she said, "let's do it." UFC on ESPN The UFC is now on ESPN and ESPN+. Subscribe to ESPN+ to get: Exclusivewas so tight, Waterson slept in the attic at Jackson Wink and worked at Hooters to pay for her training. "I was in a really dark place at the time," Waterson remembers. "I was all by myself. I was struggling, and I was getting beat up every day." It was then that Staff Sgt. Joshua Gomez finally found the courage to talk to her. He kept running into her at bars and parties after that fortuitous night in Hooters. "I remember finally saying, 'Hey, I don't know you, it's none of my business, but what are all these bruises from?'" She told him she trained at Jackson Wink. He told her, eventually, that he was the No. 5 amateur middleweight boxer in the nation. "I'd come home and