For those unaware, “southpaw” is a term in combat sports that references the opposite of an orthodox stance, where a person operates with their right foot forward – thereby making their left side the power side by default. The term originated in 19th-century baseball, where the word ‘southpaw’ was used to cite everyone from left-handed pitchers to first basemen alike. It would soon be applied to other sports like boxing, where it was used sparsely up until the 1950s to describe lefties. Aside from the fact that orthodox fighters would and could outright refuse to fight southpaws in boxing’s earlier days (which, in turn, forced more fighters to adopt orthodox stances), the world – in general – was much less flexible toward left-handed people back then. It wasn’t until the 1970s to where southpaws started to become more of a common occurrence in boxing communities, but there are still prejudices about the stance that are held to this day. MMA, which notably fast-forwarded martial arts and combat sports progression during its eruption in the 1990s, didn’t take as long to populate its sphere with southpaw stances.