While Astrid Reichert’s MMA career had erupted, peaked, and come back down to earth, Heidi Christenson’s MMA career had also erupted.

It hadn’t come back down to earth.

The MMA purists hated her before she ever set foot in the cage. To them, Heidi Christenson wasn’t a “real” fighter — she was a pro wrestler. A performance sport, flashy and theatrical, maybe impressive in its own right but worthless in MMA. They lumped her discipline alongside tae kwon do and capoeira: fine for demonstrations, laughable in serious combat. On top of that, she was a model, a pretty face. Surely she’d be smart enough to stay out of the cage. If she wasn’t, then she would deserve it when her face was broken and her aura was shattered.

She made her debut as a bantamweight, on September 17 of 2017. Her debut opponent was meant to prove the point: a jujitsu black belt who would expose Heidi’s “fake grappling.” The script was written — Heidi would be taken down and submitted. Instead, the opposite happened. After opening with a few body kicks, Heidi clinched, blasted her opponent with a knee, then calmly pulled guard. Within seconds, her legs cinched into a triangle choke. The black belt clawed and thrashed, but tapped in the first round.

The purists moved the goalposts immediately. It was “bad matchmaking.” “Weak opposition.” They muttered about her footwork and her stance. Anything to avoid admitting what had just happened: Heidi Christenson had tapped out a black belt in her first MMA fight.

Her second fight came against a wrestler, the style the purists insisted would nullify her. Heidi stuffed the first shots, reset her stance, and inside two minutes unleashed the same weapon that had finished countless foes in pro wrestling. The Lethal Roundhouse smashed across her opponent’s jaw, dropping her unconscious in a heap.

Her third fight pitted her against a decorated kickboxer. Heidi bullied her against the fence, suplexed her off it, and finished her with a top-mount triangle choke.

The fourth fight was different. Her opponent openly admitted to being a childhood fan, someone who had grown up watching Heidi in the CAL when she was still a golden-haired heroine. For the first time in her MMA career, Heidi touched gloves in the cage. Minutes later, she rolled into an omoplata and forced the tap. Then she hugged and consoled her opponent in the center of the cage — a shocking glimpse that perhaps, just maybe, the hair-of-gold, heart-of-gold woman Heidi had been twenty years earlier wasn’t completely gone.

By 2020, with Heidi 4–0, the commissioners decided it was time to test her against a higher caliber of opponent. Several names were tossed around — including Astrid herself, then 3–0 and quietly earning a reputation as a spoiler — but ultimately they settled on Marissa Graves. Graves was no soft touch: a decorated Golden Gloves champion, an Olympic gold medalist in boxing, and already 6–0 in MMA with every win coming by either knockout or TKO. On paper, it was the classic striker versus grappler matchup. In reality, it carried far more weight — a clash of pedigrees, styles, and reputations that would shape the trajectory of both women’s careers.

The fight was announced in the middle of a year defined by protests and unrest. Graves, already known for having a miles-wide nasty streak, and for wearing her ‘blacktivism’ on her shoulder, leaned hard into the moment. She called Heidi a “Barbie,” a “goldhead,” hurled anti-white insults, and sneered that she would shatter Heidi’s face so badly her plastic surgeon would have to retire. The press conferences were ugly, Graves spitting venom while Heidi, gagged by the climate of 2020, could do nothing but seethe. At one press event she gripped the mic so hard her knuckles whitened, trembling with rage but saying nothing. The weigh-in nearly erupted when Graves pressed her forehead into Heidi’s, jawing insults until security pried them apart.

By fight night, Graves had made herself so obnoxious that even some of Heidi’s longtime haters admitted she was the lesser of two evils.

The Fight

The opening minute looked like vindication for the purists. Graves danced around Heidi’s kicks, stung her with a straight that dropped her, then cracked her with a hook that sent her down again. Fifty seconds in, the arena shook. Graves dove on her to finish.

It was a mistake.

The moment Graves entered her guard, Heidi snapped into control, rolling her onto her back. She trapped Graves' right arm and drove short elbows into her elbow joint, then threatened a kimura on the other. Graves' vaunted punching power evaporated in seconds. When she clawed to her feet, Heidi kicked her into the cage, suplexed her off it, and spent the rest of the round grinding her face into the canvas.

The second round was worse. Heidi toyed with her. She cinched a triangle choke, squeezed until Graves' face turned purple — then let it go, kicked her away, and laughed. She immediately pounced, seized a back grapple, and slammed her without even following her down. She threw kicks not at Graves' head, but at her arms — battering her already tender right elbow. Every strike made Graves wince.

When the horn sounded, Graves limped to her corner, clutching her arm. She shook her head when told to rise for the third. Whether it was the state of her elbow or the fear of what would happen next, she refused to continue. The referee waved it off. Graves sat slumped on her stool, defeated.

Heidi’s hand was raised, and she stormed across the cage, flipping Graves off with both hands at point-blank range. Graves stared at the floor, broken, unwilling to meet her tormentor’s gaze.

Aftermath

The reaction was immediate and polarized. Heidi’s fans declared her vindicated: she had eaten clean shots, survived, and still imposed her will. She could suffer, she could adjust, she could plan. Her detractors howled. They called for her disqualification, denounced her sportsmanship, accused Graves of throwing the fight. They dissected the guard dive frame by frame, insisting it was a work.

But the image that lingered was undeniable: Marissa Graves, Olympic gold medalist, broken on her stool, while Heidi Christenson stood over her with both middle fingers raised.

The Press Conference

If anyone expected Heidi to cool down once the fight was over, they didn’t know Heidi Christenson. She stormed into the press conference still flushed with rage, her hair damp with sweat, her voice trembling with venom. What usually came across as calculated charisma — barbed one-liners, sly seduction — was gone. This wasn’t a promo. This was fury.

“Fuck Marissa Graves and the horse she rode in on,” Heidi snapped the moment she sat down. “She’s a loser. She’s a cowardly cunt. I don’t know what the fuck kind of cans she was fighting in the Olympics, but she better crawl back to boxing, because she is fucking terrible at real fighting. If I’d known she was gonna puss out like that, I’d have snapped her arm clean with that kimura.”

The assembled media sat in stunned silence. Even by Heidi’s standards, it was beyond the pale. At her side, coach Cito Conarri tried to cut things short, motioning to staff to end the session.

But Heidi wasn’t finished. She leaned into the mic, eyes blazing, and spat her final words:

“I FUCKING OWN HER. I owned her body in that fight and I own her worthless fucking soul right goddamn now. She didn’t even have the guts to look at me. And as soon as I get home, I’m gonna try to masturbate to her ugly sad little loser face on sheer fucking principle.”

Reporters shifted in their seats, horrified. A few shouted questions were drowned out by staff ushering Heidi away. 

The meltdown at the press conference didn’t change anyone’s mind about Heidi Christenson — it only pushed the lines deeper. Those who loved her now adored her, and those who despised her recast her from villain to monster. To her fans, she was stripped down to pure truth and fury, the kind of fighter you had to see. To her critics, she was irredeemable, a walking scandal.

Nobody could honestly call an Olympic gold medalist a can, and with Marissa Graves beaten, Heidi’s haters were running out of ammunition. The familiar chorus of “the next one will expose her” fell quiet. What remained was muttering about sloppy footwork, or the fallback sneer: “Don’t call her good until she beats Nunes or Cyborg.”

A few days later, a calmer Heidi held another press conference. She admitted Graves' first knockdown “rocked her a bit,” though she waved off the second. “It looked worse than it felt. It didn’t hurt. I hadn’t quite shaken the first one off and got up too soon. The fall actually helped me reset.”

On Graves, the venom still poured. “I wish I had the audacity to really throw that race shit back in her face. But she called me the Great White Hope and then, well… you saw how the fight went.” Later: “I despise her more than any other human being walking the planet. At least Gemma [her wrestling rival] beat some respect into me. Marissa didn’t even come close.” And finally, the coldest line of all: “Yes, I would’ve absolutely ended her fighting career if I could. She knew it, and that’s why she wouldn’t get back up.”

After that, the MMA media mostly gave up trying to talk sense about her. Coverage devolved into idolization or outrage, with little in between. The rare sober takes got buried. Luke Thomas put it as plainly as anyone: “She’s close to UFC-ready, if not there already. But if she wants to progress into the top 10, she has to bring up her punching game. And considering she barely threw arm strikes in pro wrestling, that’s a big ‘if.’ But, if she can add that dimension, she might actually be a legitimate title contender.”

Heidi, of course, ignored it. What was the fun in talking sense when she could bask in the worship of her supporters and troll the ones who hated her?

Marissa Graves did not dwell on the Heidi fight. After issuing a brief statement about her elbow injury, she returned to the octagon and resumed winning. Publicly, she acted as if the Christenson bout had never happened. Reporters learned quickly that any mention of it meant permanent banishment from her camp, and most complied. Critics noted that her team became more selective with matchmaking afterward, steering her toward fights that reinforced her reputation while avoiding stylistic dangers. For Graves, the Heidi loss became a ghost — unspoken, unacknowledged, but quietly shaping the choices that followed.

Heidi’s sixth fight lasted barely twenty seconds. She shot straight into an armbar off the opening clinch, wrenching the tap before the cameras could even settle. At the press conference, she smirked and dismissed it outright. “I always avoided armbars because they’re like fighting on easy mode. And now look what happened. Next question.”

Fight 7 was a completely different kettle of fish. Claudia Dreyer entered without a hint of bravado. A German veteran who had come up through the Mejiro Gym two years before Heidi, she refused to be drawn into trash talk no matter how hard the press egged her on. Instead, she defended the woman across from her. “She gets a ridiculous amount of disrespect,” Dreyer said. “She humiliates everyone who disrespects her — I think I’ll try being respectful.” At one point she even added, “If I took the amount of verbal abuse she does, I’d be lashing out too.” It was the kind of sportsmanship Heidi was almost never shown. Heidi, for her part, seemed almost dumbfounded by an opponent who was talking more like her hype man than someone who was going to try to beat her up in the very near future. Her response was uncharacteristically mild, saying “A respectful opponent is a dangerous opponent.” Even the weigh-in and staredown was drama-free, and the fight started with the second fistbump of Heidi’s fighting career.

In the first round Dreyer fought with discipline. Whenever Heidi tried to plant for a body kick, she circled out, letting the strike land at a glance. In the clinch she absorbed Heidi’s knees but never gave up a throw, proving tougher than expected in close. But where she found her best success was at mid-range — too far for Heidi to tie her up, too near for the kicks to build power. There, Dreyer’s straight punches landed clean, exposing the hole in Heidi’s game: her hands were slow, her offense shallow, her boxing far beneath the rest of her toolkit. She never truly threatened Heidi, but she made her work in ways no opponent had yet. The second round ended when Heidi wrapped a guillotine in the clinch, forcing Dreyer into a scramble. Dreyer slipped free — a small triumph — but failed to fully reset, and Heidi blasted her with the Lethal Roundhouse. Dreyer fell, Heidi mounted, and finished with an americana at 2:48.

Officially, it went down as another Heidi Christenson finish — 7–0, another submission, another different submission, another showcase of versatility. But in hindsight, this was the beginning of the end. Casual fans never noticed the flaws in her technique, and her detractors had cried wolf so long that no one was listening. Only the keenest observers saw what Claudia Dreyer revealed by treating Heidi with absolute seriousness: her footwork lagged and her punches had no power. For the first time, the aura of inevitability had cracks, even if the scoreboard said otherwise.

Fight eight was back to form. Heidi clinched, pummeled behind and jumped into a rear naked choke, dragging the opponent down to the mat already tied up. Another first round submission ensued shortly after.

The ninth fight was another first round submission win, but it proved more controversial. Heidi had a clear chance at another armbar, but her opponent stubbornly defended, locking her own wrist to deny the extension. Rather than waste time prying it loose, Heidi slid her thighs up around the woman’s neck and cinched a brutal neckscissor. She squeezed until her opponent went limp and unconscious. Her fans roared; her detractors howled. To them it was “a sexy show for the cameras,” a humiliation tactic, an embarrassment to the sport. To her supporters, it was just another reminder that Heidi Christenson could end a fight any way she pleased.

At this point, the debate over Heidi Christenson’s status as a legitimate fighter had shifted. Nobody could call her a novelty act anymore. Four more wins, bringing her to 9–0, had forced even the stubborn skeptics to reckon with her. Rumors swirled that the UFC — long uninterested in her sideshow reputation — was now quietly reaching out. She wasn’t just surviving in MMA. She was thriving, dominating, and, in her own polarizing way, proving herself real.

The promoters didn’t want to risk giving Heidi a championship bout if she was bound for the UFC, and by now almost nobody else wanted to fight her. She had become a nightmare matchup, a career-shortener, a guaranteed humiliation reel. Astrid Reichert was nobody’s first choice for Heidi Christenson’s next opponent. She probably wasn’t anybody’s tenth.

She was just the first one willing to take the fight.

It was the perfect storm: an unheralded challenger, a hype machine in overdrive, and a Heidi Christenson so dominant that her victory felt like complete inevitability.