The first time Tatiana Suarez considered competing in combat sports was back in 1994, when she was watching a wrestling tournament out in California’s Inland Empire. She was there to support her 10-year-old brother, Chris Lopez, a wrestler since the earliest days, and turned to her mom with an innocent enough declaration. “I want to wrestle, too” she said. Her mother, who’d grown up with siblings that wrestled — all of them boys — presented her with some bad news.
“Girls don’t wrestle,” her mom said.
At that very moment, Suarez pointed to where a 12-year-old Marcie Van Dusen was competing on the mats.