Hey everyone. My name is Ashley “Smashley” Cummins and I am super pumped for my fight on April 28th and for the entire Invicta FC card! My current professional record is 2-0 and I was 8-0 as an amateur. As a pro, I also hold the 115-pound Xtreme Fighting League title in Oklahoma.

I live in St Louis, Missouri and currently train at St. Charles MMA and Vaghi Martial Arts. Both gyms are affiliated with each other. I have been training at the gyms for the past 5 years and I absolutely love them! I have amazing teammates. They are all my big brothers and we are just like a family.

We are always there for each other and of course my teammates always pick on me, haha. I also have great coaches. My MMA and jiu-jitsu coaches are Mike Rogers and Rodrigo Vaghi. Vaghi is currently a 4th degree black belt under Rickson Gracie and Mike is a black belt under Vaghi. And of course I cannot forget my amazing boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, and strength and conditioning coaches.

Right now, I am about 5 1/2 weeks out from fight night. I started going hard at 8 weeks out. When prepping for a fight, I am at the gym for several hours a day, six times a week. I always make sure to split up my time equally with every aspect of MMA and to split up my time between both gyms. Besides being at my MMA gyms for several hours every day, I also work my strength and conditioning for two hours a day, four times a week. Typically, I make Wednesdays my day off from training to let my muscles recuperate, but even on my days off I am at the gym working jiu-jitsu technique.

In my eyes, your days off can also be used to learn and grow in MMA without exerting your muscles and still letting your body rest.

I feel so blessed to be a part of the very first Invicta fight card. This is such an amazing opportunity for myself and the entire WMMA community. This amazing opportunity and my goal of being the best is what drives me to kill myself every day in the gym. I will be in the best shape of my life for this fight and will be more than ready to take home the W! I go into every fight knowing that I prepared as much as I could and I am 100% ready. In my opinion, the worst feeling in the world when you step into the cage is thinking to yourself, “I could have done more to get ready.” I go into every fight making sure that is never the case. I cannot wait to see so many talented FMMA fighters show their skills. It is going to be a great night of fights that will not disappoint the fans.

A lot of people ask me how I balance my fight career with my law enforcement career. Yes, I am a full-time police officer. I love my job as a police officer and I love being a fighter. I knew going into law enforcement that it was going to be hard to juggle both, but I have actually made it work very well with my schedule. I am on permanent midnights (9pm to 7am) which is great for two reasons: 1) I work all night, sleep all morning, train all afternoon and go back into work, which does not interfere with getting to the gym, and 2) midnights are when all the crazy/drunk people come out the most and you get the best kinds of calls, lol. I also work 10-hour shifts, which is great because I have several days off and that helps with my MMA training.

Every day, I look forward to going to the gym and work. Training for a fight is not only physically draining, but also mentally as well. When I am at work, that is “my time.” My time to not think about all of the grueling hours at the gym or the weight cutting or the fight coming up. It’s my time to focus on protecting the community as much as I can. I am a very aggressive officer who is always after drugs and guns. I go into work every night with a goal of finding some drugs on my traffic stops and a majority of nights I do. Once I find the drugs I try to get the suspects to give me the info on who the dealers are and then go from there. It is also pretty amusing with some of the creative hiding spots people use on their body to hide their dope (use your imagination, lol).

Sometimes where there’s dope, there’s also guns, which I love to get. In my mind, every gun I take off the street might have been a gun that would have in the future harmed an innocent person or a police officer. Everyone knows Missouri is the number one state for meth and meth labs. Meth and mobile meth labs are easy to find on traffic stops. I also get a lot of what police officers call “Smurfers.” That’s people going to pharmacies to buy pseudo to take back to their meth lab to cook.

For those of you who have never met me in person, I am 5’2 1/2 and fight at 115 pounds, so obviously I am tiny. I see when I lock up a lot of these grown men that are 6’2 and 200 pounds that they get an expression on their face like, “What is this midget going to do to me?” And sometimes, these people run. What’s even better is when they run and this midget catches up to them, and all of a sudden they are face down in the dirt with hands cuffed behind their back. Now that expression is priceless! LOL.

A lot of people ask me what is the hardest thing I have seen on the job so far. One night I was dispatched to a traffic accident. The man in this single-car accident died on impact. I found out later he had been drinking and driving. He was only 21 and just two blocks away from his house. The image of his mangled body will haunt me forever. Ever since that moment, I take DWI’s very seriously, which is something I also get a lot of on midnight shift. Drunks are usually the hardest to deal with because they are sometimes very combative, but it is worth it. Every time I get a drunk off the road, I think to myself that I might have just saved that person’s life or another innocent person’s life on the road.

One thing that most people do not know about me is that I have been very involved with rescuing stray and abused animals throughout my life. It is another passion of mine and I am reaching out to the MMA community for help on a project I am working on. During the winter in freezing temperatures, I rescued 9 cats that were living in a dumpster. People in the area complained that they were a nuisance and they were going to poison them. I paid out of my own pocket for all 9 to be spayed/neutered and for their shots. Since then, they have all been living in a room in my basement due to the fact that they are feral and not adoptable.

Since the rescue, I have been working with the Shannon Foundation (located in St. Clair, Missouri). This rescue center has done amazing work not only in saving dogs and cats but also rescuing horses, llamas, deer, pigs, goats, birds and other animals that were going to be slaughtered, abused, wounded and left to die.

We want to build an indoor/outdoor cat shelter for the cats at the Shannon Foundation. We need funds to buy the materials so that we can build the shelter. Once it is built, it will provide more opportunities for myself and others to rescue other feral and abandoned cats and have a safe place for them to live out the rest of their lives. If interested in donating, you can do so here. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I want to thank Janet, Sam, Shannon and everyone else involved with Invicta FC. If any sponsors are interested in sponsoring me, please send me an email. I will be updating everyone on my training for this fight with my next blog.

-Smashley