‘A woman king’: World kickboxing champion Fredia Gibbs honored with statue at Cabrini University
“I wish my mother and grandmother were here to see this,” Fredia Gibbs said as she stared at the statue.
When the tarp was pulled off and the bronze sculpture of her was revealed publicly for the first time next to a pond outside Cabrini University’s Thomas P. Nerney Pavilion, Fredia Gibbs looked up at herself and smiled, tears forming in her eyes the same way they had throughout the day Wednesday.
“I wish my mother and grandmother were here to see this,” Gibbs said as she stared at the statue.
“They were my backbone, my strength. I am a combination of them, plus me. They were women kings, and they taught me to be a woman king.”
It was fitting that Gibbs used the word king and not queen. She has spent the last few decades kicking her way through gender walls –– literally.
Gibbs, nicknamed “The Cheetah,” was the first Black woman to hold the International Sport Kickboxing Association world kickboxing title. Her kickboxing career came without a defeat. She wasn’t just a fighter, she was a multi-sport, All-American athlete from Chester’s Fairgrounds projects, a track and basketball star who played basketball professionally overseas after stamping her name all over the record books at Cabrini.
She still owns the three highest single-season totals for points and steals at Cabrini, and three of the top four single-season assist records.
But it was in fighting and martial arts where she earned her fame. She started in martial arts when she was a young girl in Chester, needing the tools to gain confidence against those who bullied her when she was young.
She became a World Kickboxing Association and WCK Muay Thai world title holder, and later had a 9-2-1 record as a professional boxer. A news publication once referred to her in a headline as “The Most Dangerous Woman in the World,” and the image used in that article was the inspiration for the bronze statue created by Doylestown sculptor Jennifer Frudakis-Petry.
The statue is believed to be the first of a female athlete erected in Pennsylvania. It originally was intended to be at the Boys and Girls Club of Chester, and then later planned for Rose Tree Park in Media.
Gibbs said Cabrini, where she earned a college degree after failing out of Temple, is “home.”
One of the speakers Wednesday at Cabrini was James Simms, who grew up and graduated from Chester High with Gibbs. He later became head instructor at Quiet Storm Dojo, where Gibbs got her start as a kid.
He recalled their days playing pickup basketball as teens. The boys, Simms said, would always pick Gibbs. If they didn’t, they’d quickly learn to pick her next time, because, as Simms said, Gibbs was always “embarrassing all the guys.”
» READ MORE: They bullied Fredia Gibbs, but she turned their taunts into motivation to become a kickboxing champion
Years later, Simms went to contact Gibbs when she was living in California. He left a message, hoping to catch up and reconnect. He got a callback, but it wasn’t from Gibbs, it was her agent.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she really made it,’” Simms said.
As Gibbs said Wednesday, there’s still more to come. She said she’s working with executives in California on a series about her life story.
Before the statue was unveiled, Gibbs, auditioning her talents, rapped a poem at the end of her speech:
“To the kickboxing world, I kicked in so discreet. ... My style and technique, oh so unique. ... I stood undefeated, a draw only one. ... When I had an exhibition, against a woman’s son. ... So, what’s up? Test your luck. ... Take a chance, my friend. ... Catch a kick to the chin as the ref counts to 10. ... ‘Cause I’ve been known to whoop ass ... Like Wesley Snipes and Bruce Lee. ... Hollywood’s about to make a movie about me. ... No other girl could beat me, no woman could defeat me. ... They tucked their tail between their legs and ran whenever they meet me. ... I’m sexy, I’m deadly, I’m a Quiet Storm. ... But in the ring, I ain’t humble. ...You want to test me? Let’s get ready to rumble ...”
Gibbs, a 2022 Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame inductee, one of the many Halls she has a place in, has spent most of her life proving to people that she means it.
Just ask her family members.
One of her cousins spoke at the ceremony Wednesday and recalled the times when they were kids. Fredia, the oldest of all the grandchildren, would punch her cousins in the arms and make sure they learned to be tough enough to handle the pain.
“Greatness runs in our family,” she’d tell them. “And we don’t have time for punks.”