Perched on a curb outside the gym 10th Planet San Diego, unceremoniously wedged between a taco shop and auto repair business, Ilima-Lei Macfarlane laughs and laughs and laughs some more.
As the Honolulu native turned La Mesa, Calif., resident — who is preparing to defend her Bellator flyweight world title Thursday against unbeaten Juliana Velasquez — recounts all the ways 2020 has treated her like a living, breathing piñata, the calamitous becomes comedic.
Start with her destination wedding, wiped off the calendar because of COVID-19. “Her baby,” a coffee-colored rescue dog named Kope, died from a blood clot. She hired a private investigator after someone she described as a stalker continually tried to report her for training, despite being in line with county rules, during the pandemic.
Macfarlane was splashed across the front page in Hawaii after filing a lawsuit accusing a former basketball coach at Punahou of abusing her when she was 12. The timing was forced by others coming forward as the statute of limitations neared its end.
The 30-year-old spent an unsettling night at the new home she bought, in La Mesa as May rioting in the wake of social justice protests roiled nearby. A USO Tour she attended was diverted when “war started popping off in the Middle East.”
The absurdity of it all peels the curtain back on Macfarlane’s unflappable resilience.
“It’s been crazy, let me tell you,” she said.
The year already was positioned to push Macfarlane’s mental and emotional buttons long before a once-in-a-lifetime virus upended our lives.
Macfarlane trained for her first mixed martial arts fight as a bucket-list item to scratch off in 2015. When she started winning, a contract followed. The graduate student at San Diego State weighed the unplanned pivot as she studied to become a teacher.
All of it pushed back Macfarlane’s ultimate goal of starting a family.
“I thought, I can actually make this a career,” she said. “Why not just fight for five years, until I’m 30. That’s when I wanted to start a family. Then I became champion and it was like, OK, I’ll keep fighting. I extended my contract another three years. Now the timeline is to finish out the contract, then have kids.
“But none of my timelines ever work out.”
The bigger issue: Macfarlane was 29 and described herself as “super, super single.” She considered freezing her eggs. A week later, through a mutual friend, she met her fiancé, a Hawaiian reggae musician named Jason.
“It was a whirlwind romance,” she said. “We did the whole lockdown together. We were able to compress like 10 years of a relationship into the lockdown since we were together all the time.”
Then came 2020’s first ruthless stroke.
The couple orchestrated an elaborate wedding in Jamaica, before COVID-19 decided to scrap the plans.
“Things started getting more complicated and COVID started getting more intense,” Macfarlane said. “So we were like, let’s just wait. Now we’re like, hell no, we’re not doing a big wedding. We have huge families. It’s going to be stressful. I’d rather use the money to buy land in Hawaii.
“Who knows, maybe we’ll be drunk in Vegas and do it one night. It will be spontaneous.”
Macfarlane can handle a punch, in more ways than one. When other victims spoke up about the coach Macfarlane said abused her as a pre-teen, attorneys urged those involved to file the lawsuit in April.
“It was this huge scandal in Hawaii,” Macfarlane said. “It was super nuts.”
Now, the champion is recalibrating focus to defend her belt against Velasquez at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. Macfarlane is 11-0. Her opponent stands 10-0.
Sports finally found a way to shoulder cranky 2020 out of the way, if only briefly.
“A lot of people are saying Bellator has been protecting me or I’ve been ducking her because they think she deserved a title shot earlier,” Macfarlane said. “I’m like, you guys don’t realize I don’t make the fights. I just fighter whoever they tell me to fight. So, this fight is going to be validation.
“If I lose the belt, it’s just the end of a chapter. I’ve been a good champion. I’ve accomplished everything I wanted. I fought in my hometown. I’ve sold out every arena I fought at as a champion. I go into every fight being OK if I lose.
“Move on. Next chapter.”
Macfarlane refuses to be fooled by the year’s unrelenting shenanigans.
“I’m not getting my hopes up that this fight’s going to happen because every single card they’ve put on had several fights scrapped because of COVID,” she said. “I’m not holding my breath. It’s not going to be real for me until I get punched in the face.”
In 2020, that qualifies as more of the same.
Miller writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune
