Jennah Creason was four years old when she eyed a medal one of her brothers won in a wrestling tournament in Mexico. She was tiny and the medal dwarfed her hands.
She asked her father, Larry, what it was and he explained to her that her brother had competed against others in Mexico to win it.
"I want to win one in America!" she said to him.
A short while later, Larry Creason walked into his living room to find his young daughter had gotten the orange cones he used to train in football and set up a makeshift gym. She put cushions from the sofa against the wall which she used as a heavy bag, as well as all sorts of other exercises, including crunches and step-ups. Ever since, her focus was on becoming a great fighter.
On Saturday, the 18-year-old Creason will make her pro boxing debut as a welterweight at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, Calif., on former unified champion Jose Ramirez's undercard. She's ranked No. 5 at welterweight among youth females by USA Boxing and is 29-3 with four KOs heading into her pro debut Saturday. She's won a California high school wrestling state championship at 143 pounds in 2023 and numerous grappling competitions. She not only trains boxing and wrestling, but also judo, karate, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai.
She's one of seven children of Larry Creason, a single father who got all of his children into wrestling. Jennah began wrestling when she was four, mostly against boys, and hasn't stopped since.
Wrestling was tough at first, since most of the boys she met were bigger, stronger and more experienced than she was. She went to her father and was not sure how she would ever succeed, but he wasn't about to let her give up.
"Just how I am, I would go after the biggest and strongest ones who had the most experience," she said of her early days. "If they kept beating me up, I figured I would learn from that and then I could start beating other people up. At first, I wasn't really like that. I was getting beaten up and beaten up and I hadn't won a single match in a tournament or practice, ever. I went to my Dad crying one time and I said, 'Dad, I don't want to do this no more. I can't beat them. I can't do it.' He said to me, 'Well, you've started a season and we can't stop in the middle.' And I asked him how I was supposed to win given they were all bigger and stronger and had wrestled a lot longer."
It was a good question, but he had some sage fatherly advice for her that really turned her fortunes around. Go after the best, he said. Accept you will lose but make it a point to learn. And when you finally beat the kids who are beating you, go after the kids that were beating them.
It was a hard thing for a young girl to accept, but she loved the idea of being a fighter and so she agreed she wouldn't quit.
She showed her toughness when she stood up to a bully who was picking on kids at the bus stop. He'd been terrorizing many of the other kids, both boys and girls, and then finally turned his attention to Creason. She was 8 and he was 9 or 10, she said, and bigger than her. Her got in her face and was cursing at her. She went home and told her father that she wanted to fight him.
So the next day, her father drove her to the bus stop and she had her training equipment with her. She pulled out two pairs of gloves and challenged the bully to a fight.
"I said, 'I want to fight you since you are picking on me and getting in my face, so go get your Mom,' " she said.
The boy backed down and never bothered anyone else.
And she made a name for herself at her gym when she was nine, and sparred the best boys in the gym, who were 11. She bloodied their noses, an indication to her father that he might be dealing with a special athlete.
"I'm so proud of her because she's had a dream of being a great fighter since she was very young and she's continued to follow her dreams," Larry Creason said. "She had that focus and was so determined and she's still that way. She's never satisfied and she always wants to get better."
She'd trained with males from her earliest days and it was natural to her. And now, even though she's an elite competitor, she trains mostly with men. They are usually bigger and stronger, black belts and other accomplished fighters.
"That's the only way you get better," she said. She hits so hard in boxing that as she was training for this fight, they got sparring partners who were 25 and 30 pounds bigger so they could take her punches.
She's best in boxing at this point, and that's why she's making her pro debut as a boxer first. But she's not forgetting MMA and wants to try to compete in both eventually.
She's trained by Bob Cook, who has worked with a large number of MMA stars, and is managed by DeWayne Zinkin, the one-time manager of ex-UFC champion Chuck Liddell, so she's in good hands. They sat down and agreed it made sense for her to start in boxing and then adjust as she advanced.
But she's convinced she can compete at a high level in both sports eventually.
"My goal is to do both and I know it's been very difficult for other fighters in the past to do so," she said. "I've been training and competing my whole life that way. If there is a way to work that other, whether it's contracts or whatever, I want to be able to do both."