‘I want to hurt you’: Jackie Cataline responds to Jamie Edenden’s no-takedown challenge at Invicta FC 61

Jackie Cataline dedicated her entire life to wrestling before making the move to mixed martial arts in 2022, and she isn’t planning to abandon that skill to prove a point against boxing veteran Jamie Edenden at Friday’s Invicta FC 61 in Shawnee, Okla.

The featherweights were originally scheduled to meet Feb. 7, but the match was called off after Cataline had to serve a medical suspension following a Power Slap loss. Edenden was “pretty pissed off” with the cancellation, saying that Cataline’s “ego wrote a check her ass couldn’t catch.” Cataline won’t buy into Edenden’s “whoever shoots first is a p*ssy” challenge, though.

“Obviously she’s trying to hype the fight up, and more power to her,” Cataline told MMA Fighting. “But in reality, the fact that she doesn’t want to go down to the ground with me just makes it better for me. Obviously that is where I’m really good at. I have not fought anybody that I couldn’t take down and she’s obviously scared of the takedown. So, for me, it’s just like, oh, talk shit, now I’m really going to try and take you down and hurt you. Now, I’m not just trying to win the fight, now I want to hurt you. It’s a good fuel for me.”

Cataline improved to 5-3 with a trio of finishes in MMA with a dominant ground-and-pound TKO of Kelly Ottoni back in August, while Edenden (5-2-1) looks for her fifth straight victory since turning pro in 2022.

“She doesn’t want to go down to the ground,” Cataline said. “She wants a brawl. She’s a brawly type fighter and she just comes forward and throws—kind of not necessarily that great of boxing, she just kind of throws and walks forward, so that’s perfect for me as a wrestler. Every fight I want to win that way where I’m just like mauling you. Take you down, cut you open. That’s my intention going into a fight. It’s not supposed to be like we both looked really good after the fight. One of us should look like a mess.”

A mother of four who works as an electrician and a high school wrestling coach, Cataline is still going strong in combat sports at age 36. The former U. S. Olympic wrestling team member has no plans slowing down, with her docket including fighting in MMA for Invicta FC and trading blows to the head at Power Slap.

“I’m going to be 37 this year and obviously my window is very short for competing,” Cataline said. “I don’t want to be 45 and still doing this [laughs]. With Power Slap, honestly, for me, it was a good business move. A good foot in the door. Dana White is my boss now. And the fact that they were able to put in my contract that I’m still able to compete in fighting and Power Slap, because a lot of people’s contracts don’t state that, they can’t do anything else. I don’t plan on slowing down either. I plan on competing in Power Slap at least three or four times this year, and fighting three or four times this year.”

“I was on the U.S. national and Olympic wrestling team, so I competed for the national team for about 20 years,” she continued. “But I have a day job, I’m an electrician. I have two biological kids and two step kids, so there’s four kids in my household. I coach high school wrestling with my brother. I’m a super busy person, I don’t have to fight. I don’t fight for money because obviously my career, I make decent money, but I just like to do it. I like to compete, I like to try new things. I’m going to try and get as many things in as I can in the next three or four years before I finally just decide to retire from competing altogether.”

As for Power Slap, she defends the promotion saying that it looks worse than it actually is.

“I don’t think that it’s any more dangerous than MMA,” Cataline said. “To be honest, MMA, you’re throwing hundreds of punches in a 15- or 25-minute fight. You’re getting slapped three times. It’s not as much damage as you’re taking in fighting. My face has never looked how it looks after an MMA fight, so I honestly don’t think that the damage is as bad. It’s more viral. There are knockouts. You know, it’s more like, ‘Click on it, you’ll see a crazy knockout.’ It’s like a wow factor. You’re just seeing this knockout and you think that that’s like what’s happening to everybody and that’s just not the case. I definitely take more damage in fights than I do in slapping.”