Who is Mia Kang? Everything you need to know about Khalil Rountree Jr.'s gilrfriend
UFC light heavyweight contender Khalil Rountree Jr. is set to challenge for the title at this weekend's UFC 307 event. The 34-year-old fighter has kept his personal life away from the glamour of the sports entertainment industry. However, as his fight against Alex Pereira draws closer, more fans are interested in learning about Rountree Jr.'s life. This article explores the life journey of Rountree Jr.'s girlfriend, Mia Kang.
Who is Mia Kang?
Mia Kang is one of the most popular fashion icons in the world today and is widely known for her campaigns promoting size diversity in the modeling industry. The Hong Kong-born Swiss model is also a professional Muay Thai fighter and has credited martial arts with helping her overcome eating disorders in the past.
Kang was born and raised in Hong Kong by a British father and a South Korean mother, both academics who taught her to value learning for its own sake. She began modeling at 13 and soon received offers from major fashion brands and publications.
Unfortunately, Mia Kang had a tough time living up to the industry's brutal size standards due to being an overweight child, and she tried to control her body mass using egregiously unhealthy weight loss techniques. Kang has admitted to starving herself, smoking cigarettes, and abusing diuretics as a teenager to lose weight, which ultimately led to her suffering from anorexia.
The Sports Illustrated model suffered from extreme body issues for a long time before she discovered martial arts. During a holiday in Thailand in 2016, she found a Muay Thai gym and decided to give it a go.
While she primarily saw the sport as a means to lose weight, she soon fell in love with the discipline and began training regularly. She also authored a book in 2020 titled Knockout, in which she outlined how Muay Thai taught her to respect her body and help her overcome body dysmorphia.
Mia Kang competed in her first professional Muay Thai fight in 2017 and won the bout via third-round TKO. Kang has been in a relationship with UFC light heavyweight star Khalil Rountree Jr. since 2020.
When Mia Kang opened up about how Muay Thai saved her life from anorexia
In 2020, Mia Kang discussed how Muay Thai impacted her and how the sport helped her recover from severe anorexia. The model also outlined how learning martial arts helped her gain self-confidence.
In an interview with the New York Post, Kang revealed that she was once being followed by a creepy pervert through the streets of Milan in 2006. Weighing just 98 pounds, the model was frail, and the stress of trying to shake off the criminal made her collapse unconscious. The incident left her severely depressed and anxious.
More than a decade later, Mia Kang is confident she could knock the pervert's lights out if she wanted to. While her anorexia made life difficult, Muay Thai seemed to have saved the model's life at a crucial time. In the interview, she said:
"Without it [Muay Thai], I think I would have spiraled further down into my eating disorders and depression... I’m so lucky to still be modeling at the age of 31 while practicing martial arts. I want everybody to know there is light at the end of the tunnel."