Plenty of fighters go through trials and tribulations to further their fighting career. Any number deal with personal tragedy, illness, and injury along the way. Sammy-Jo Luxton appears to have collected a career’s worth of setbacks all in little more than a year, however.
Luxton (2-0) was supposed to fight for the PFL last June, only to withdraw from the bout. And for good reason, as she explained to Cageside Press ahead of this year’s PFL Europe: Belfast card.
While she has a “pure buzz going through my body” ahead of her return, 2024 was another story entirely.
“I ended up crashing my car, that was my fault. Then my car got broken into, and my whole kit bag got stolen. Then I was about a week out from my FCC fight [in March 2024], and my grandma passed away. And I didn’t really grieve her until after the fight,” recalled Luxton. “And then six weeks later, I got a phone call saying that my dad had a heart attack, and he was now in an induced coma.”
Luxton herself, while staying at her father’s bedside, then needed surgery as well. “I ended up getting put in the ward directly below my dad. So my poor family, they were going back and forth up the stairs between my dad and me.”
The hospital did make arrangements for Luxton to be able to return to her dad’s beside while still recovering herself, but she remained wheelchair bound when he passed away. Shortly after that, an infection stemming from her own operation spread to her ovaries and kidneys. “From that, it progressed into sepsis, so I got rushed into hospital again. I was seizing, tremoring, I was put on the strongest antibiotics possible.” Specialists were called, heart pains kicked in, and a nurse actually broke down, panicked that Luxton might die. Luckily, she pulled through, something her doctors attributed to her athleticism.
By the end of the year, Luxton was fully cleared. “Then in January, I got the phone call from the PFL asking if I would like to fight again. So grabbed the opportunity with both hands.”
Sammy-Jo seriously considered leaving the sport after tragedy piled on top of tragedy, even telling people at her gym that she was done. She continued to train, however, “and I feel like once you have that fighting bug, you can’t get rid of it. So the love for it just built back up, my confidence built back up, obviously physically I built back up. Now I’m just ready to fight again, and just be full health.”
This Saturday, Luxton takes on Gemma Auld at PFL Europe: Belfast. The promotion has built a number of female stars, from Kayla Harrison to Larissa Pacheco to Dakota Ditcheva. That is not lost on Sammy-Jo Luxton, who hopes to take a similar path and become one of the faces of the promotion. They just need a strawweight division first, as she plans to drop down.
“Originally when I was a Thai boxer, my weight was about 54, 55 [kilos]. That was my fight weight. So when PFL approached me, there was only a flyweight division at that point. So I just took it with both hands, and I thought ‘well I can eat a little bit more,'” noted Luxton.
“Now as the company is growing and there’s more opportunities, we’re looking at this fight at flyweight, then I’m going to drop to a catchweight at 55 kilos, then another one at 53. Just lowering my weight, and just giving myself time to feel it physically,” she continued. “And then hopefully next year there will be a strawweight [PFL] Global [division], and then I can solidify myself as one of the ‘It’ girls from the PFL.”
Watch our full interview with PFL Europe: Belfast flyweight Sammy-Jo Luxton above.
