Regina mother Charmaine Tweet to fight in MMA World Championships

Charmaine Tweet lives a double life. The mother of two is a banker by day and a fighter by night. Now Charmaine "Not so Sweet" Tweet is training for the biggest fight of her life.

On Feb. 27, Tweet is heading to Los Angeles to compete in the Invicta women's world championships for mixed martial arts. She will be fighting defending featherweight champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino.

Tweet is hoping it may be a stepping stone to joining the UFC, the biggest MMA organization in the world, but it's been a long hard road to get here. 

Aerobics tapes led to MMA career

Tweet said she had a very unconventional path to fighting.

"When I was 14 to 15 I had stopped growing up. I'm six feet tall, but kept eating the same so I started growing out. I started exercising doing aerobic videos" she said. 

Tweet started doing Sugar Ray Leonard's aerobic boxing videos and it sparked her interest in boxing. A decade later she walked into a gym and said she wanted to box. The coaches told her she had the build of a kickboxer. Two world championships in kickboxing later, she still had not boxed.

Tweet had gained experience fighting all over the world as an amateur but eventually her coach directed her to something more lucrative.

"He said Charmaine, you've been doing this for free too long, get your butt into MMA and make some money."

Don't quit your day job 

Tweet works at a Credit Union as a Member Service Representative. Unfortunately, her big fight is happening right in the middle of RRSP season, which makes it difficult for her to take off time to train. 

"When I'm working, I'm doing my strength and conditioning in the morning. Going to work. Coming home at lunch, doing a run, and then coming into [Regina] to train at night."

That gruelling training schedule does not leave a lot of time for anything else. Tweet is married and has two sons, ages 18 and 15, both of whom are active in sports themselves. Tweet credits her husband for being the glue that holds the family together and admits her fighting career comes at a cost. 

"We don't travel as a family a whole lot, we don't have those summer vacations because all my vacation time from work tends to go towards fights. I miss a lot of their sporting events, both my kids used to play football together so I missed a lot of their games. It's basically time. Spending time together is the main sacrifice."

But it's a sacrifice tweet is willing to make to feed her need to compete. 

"I just have a really competitive side to me. I played a lot of high school sports. I'm from a small town in Saskatchewan. The group of girls I was with, we went to provincials in every sport we played. We were super close, a really tight-knit team. Then when I went to college, I didn't have that anymore. This now gives me that competitive outlet," she said.

That competitive drive comes out when Tweet steps into the cage. She is transformed from Charmaine the mother and banker to "Not So Sweet" Tweet. 

"I don't feel like beating people up all the time. But when you get into the cage, and the door closes, you have to turn that persona on because the woman across the cage is coming to smash your face in."

Charmaine "Not so Sweet" Tweet will be fighting "Cyborg" for the 145-pound Invicta title on Feb. 27 in Los Angeles.