# Julie Kedzie goes to Invicta as Matchmaker



## SanshouMatt (Jul 1, 2008)

After all the bad news for Shannon she finally gets something good happening over at Invicta.

At the moment, my decision to retire is permanent, and it feels like the right decision for me. If I have an itch a year from now or two years from now, like 'Oh, I've got to get back in there and fight', I'm not going to deny myself that, but I really don't have any desire to fight anymore. It's pretty much permanent, however, it was 29 fights in my career, so if I decide that it has to be 30, you know [laughs]. My coach said that I should allow myself the luxury to change my mind in the future, but it's just not what I'm feeling.

I knew that Shannon wanted bigger things for me, a stronger presence within the company. I mentioned to my manager that I was interested, and she got right into contact with me. Yesterday, we were on the phone for two hours and she said, 'You're it, you're hired.' She's giving this old, broken fighter a new career, and it's awesome [laughs].

I'm going to be learning as I go, so really, at the moment, I'm going to be writing up some plans and suggestions, trying to make contact with new fighters, and do all that first. As far as the signing and hiring of new talent, until she gives me more of an outline of what she expects, I'll be following her lead. She promised that she'll groom me for this role and help me to live up to the expectations of it.

Obviously, Shannon has been doing everything since Janet (Martin) is no longer with the company, so it will be good to take some of that burden off her shoulders. She's going to train me and teach me what she expects from me. I don't know everything up front yet; it's just something that I will be learning as I go.

I don't think it's going to hurt too much. I'll be around for the training sessions and to help the women out with coaching and sparring. I'll just set up an office here in the gym, and be doing my work in the afternoons and evenings here, after morning practice sessions. Greg considers it to be like when I was fighting. Fighting was a full time job, in addition to working for him full time. It should work out pretty well.

My first goal is to make sure all the title holders have contenders to make fights. We owe all the women fights, if they're signed to our organization, we owe them fights, but especially the belt holders, they need to be insured that there are valid contenders. That's something that I really have my eye on, making sure we get the right match-ups for title fights.

Strawweight is pretty much vacated at the moment, and there's talk of adding a 155 pound division, so it's going to be fun to find and develop new talent. From what I understand, there's quite a few women trying to get in to fill the strawweight vacancy already, so I'm pretty sure we'll be in a position to groom a strawweight title fight in this next year.

I want to see girls who have a lengthy amateur career or solid pro fights before we sign them. I'll be following Shannon's guidance for a while, so I'm secondary in this, but for me, I want to make sure that these women have enough combat experience so that we're not just throwing people in there to get hurt. If it's a pro debut, they should have lengthy amateur experience.

We want to make sure we get people in that are used to fighting and know that they love fighting and want to make it a career in earnest. The women that are already a part of Invicta are amazing, and anybody that comes in to fight them should really prove themselves.


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## AlanS (Mar 18, 2009)

The remaining Strawweight division looks very strong still, will be interesting to see what Kedzie does with them.

Great move by Kedzie to give back to WMMA when it has given her so much these last 9 years. Only issue is she's tyraining partners and best friends with Michelle Waterson, the 105-lbs champ at Invicta, may be a conflict of interests there.

But Knapp made a great move there.


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