Bash Boxing: Combate Americas' Jenny Silverio is not just a fighter

There isn’t much Combate Americas atomweight Jenny Silverio hasn’t seen from the spectrum of human behavior.

Silverio is a licensed mental health counselor in Miami and gets called when patients go off their medication. She’s always the calm one in a crisis.

“A patient can be screaming and trying to throw a chair at me, and for me, it’s like I’m sitting at the beach,” she told MMAjunkie.

Silverio, 29, is a professional fighter when she’s not a therapist. But that’s not necessarily why she’s got a level head.

“MMA is a part of me,” she said. “I don’t do it to release stress. It’s basically a practice that’s helped me master myself, my mind and my actions, which is why I fell in love with it.”

Silverio (4-1) grew up reading psychology books, fascinated by the mind and how people interact. Then she found balance in yoga and tai chi. Then she discovered kung fu and MMA, and so began another journey of understanding how the body bends, breaks and heals itself.

Tonight, she will test her skills once again, facing Kyra Batara (4-3) at a Combate Americas event taking place at LA Exchange in Los Angeles. Her fight co-headlines the UFC Fight Pass-streamed card.

But for much of Silverio’s days, she steps into another highly combative world, one where understanding and self-knowledge are precious commodities. A good portion of her clients are children who come from Miami’s ghettos and live at the poverty line.

Silverio travels to their homes and listens to stories of terrible trauma and finds a way to connect.

“I have the ability to talk to them as if they were human beings and not someone that has a problem or someone from the hood,” she said. “When I’m there with them, I’m just like them.”

There’s only so much she can do, though, in a limited amount of time. It’s a wise idea to leave before sunset.

“One time, across the street, right from where I was sitting, there was a shootout, and I had to pull the kid under the car,” she said. “The kid didn’t even notice what was going on.”

Seven days a week, Silverio is counseling around 30 clients. They might not know who Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson is, despite his Miami roots, she said. But they do know Ronda Rousey.

Sometimes during sessions, Silverio will show her clients the forms she’s learned in kung fu.

“Especially as part of anger management or relaxation techniques, I’ll show them forms, forms that I myself practice, and I’ll have them follow me, which requires them to focus and focus on their breathing and what they’re seeing,” she said.

Between the sessions, Silverio works out three times a day. She is also engaged; a good date is her fiance coming to the gym. So there are plenty of reasons for her to use fighting as a way to release stress. But that isn’t the reason she devoted herself so fully.

Instead, she said, “It’s a way for me to express myself and test my martial arts skills.”