The Ultimate Fight Chick

"I can't believe I get paid to watch one of the most exciting sports out there, and I have front-row seats," says Rachelle, pictured at right interviewing UFC scrapper Forrest Griffin.

know the sound of opportunity knocking—after all, the UFC was in the process of becoming the hottest story in sports and was developing a program for the Spike network that would be a natural showcase for a telegenic brunette with a killer smile. So you soon find yourself in a halter top and short shorts, strutting around the Octagon, filling the breaks between the bone crushing with your sass and piz­zazz. And soon after that, just as you'd hoped, you are

Feel free to fantasize about the UFC's Rachelle Leah, but don't even dream of starting a pillow fight

I

Iways keep your ears open; you never know

when opportunity will knock. One day you're 1 Rachelle Leah, ordinary Las Vegas girl study­ing to become a paramedic and doing some modeling just for fun. You go to a boxing i match, and somebody takes your picture. Then somebody else puts it on a website, and then some­body at the UFC sees it and decides that of all the daugh-

ters of Eve now inhabiting planet Earth, you possess the ineffable qualities of the perfect Octagon Girl. He hunts you down. Your reaction to his offer?

"A little hesitant, probably," you admit, "only because I knew I didn't want to be an Octagon Girl forever." Which probably means that despite having taken judo as a young­ster, you had never really envisioned your name and the words mixed martial arts in the same sentence. But you

the host of UFC All Access, helping to show the human heart that beats inside these battlers. "Honest to God." you aver, "if you just met most of our guys, you wouldn't guess they were fighters. Some of these guys are teachers or have degrees in business, and we go to their homes and show that they're just totally normal guys."

And so, in the process of showing they're normal, you've become a celeb­rity. But a fairly laid-back one. "I live in denim," you tell us. "I'm a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of girl, and for the most part, if it's summer in Vegas, I'm a jeans-shorts-and-T-shirt kind of girl. But if I'm going out, I like to dress up. I mean, I'm a girl—I love fashion."

You are also pretty laid-back when it comes to your fans. "Some girls get bitchy, but I'm fine with talking to anyone who wants to talk." Assuming the anyone in question has the right approach. "Being yourself is a good move," you advise us. "I don't like cheesy or overdone anything. I don't like cocky. I like gentlemen—real, genu­ine people—and you can see that in a person right off the bat."

It's not entirely surprising to hear that the raw energy and excitement of the UFC would appeal to someone who proudly attests, "Any extreme sport is pretty much up my alley." Any extreme sport? Let's see. "I like to dirt-bike. I wakeboard in the summer. I snow­board in the winter. I skateboard—I do it all." And even though the mere talk of it freaks out your manager, you hope to soon add skydiving to your list of accomplishments. "A friend of mine just moved to Australia, and I'm trying to take a trip to visit her in December. It would be so fun and beautiful to make my first jump there. But we'll see." One thing we won't see is your climb­ing through the ropes like the ladies of World Wrestling Entertainment. "You will never see me fighting. I think the only thing a guy would want to see is my having a pillow fight with a hot girl, and I'm not doing that, either."

Opportunity has continued to knock. First Octagon Girl, then TV host. Most recently you landed a gig working with Anheuser-Busch as a spokesmodel, and you just completed shooting a film called The Bleeding, in which you star with three tough guys named Michael Madsen, Vinnie Jones and Armand Assante. From the title, we may assume the movie is a drama about life in the Octagon, but that's not so. "It's a vam­pire thriller, an action-packed adrena­line rush. It was a great experience, and I'd love to do more. I mean, you never know what's going to happen, but that's the goal."

You're Rachelle Leah, you're not yet 25, and your star is rising.