FIREFIGHTER Sabrina Cohen (pictured) is used to working in a male environment. But now she's also successfully taken up a male-dominated sport known as ultimate fighting, and is encouraging other women to try out mixed martial arts (MMA).

Sabrina, 21, took up the increasingly popular extreme sport about a year ago, has already clinched two titles and now intends to turn semi-professional.

MMA is a combative sport which is a combination of other fighting sports such as boxing, wrestling and karate, and bouts can take place in cages as well as rings.

Sabrina, of St Brides, is eager to counter the sport's no-holds-barred reputation.

She says: "It is important to us to encourage people to see it is really not that bad."

She recently won the first women's MMA match in Wales, and at the end of last year she also won the women's international submission grappling championship, while male members of her club in Cardiff have also notched up a number of titles.

Sabrina was involved in kick-boxing when she was asked if she was interested in this alternative form of fighting skill, and she took it up with enthusiasm.

"I love it, I can't get enough of it really. It is a good way to keep fit and for self-defence," she says.

Finding opponents can be a problem, however. "Not many women do this sport," she admits. "We do need more people to take part."

Sabrina says she is now looking for semi-professional fights and is planning to take part in the Grapple and Strike Professional Show due to take place in Ebbw Vale on May 21.

This will be followed by the first all-female tournament being held in Hartlepool in August.

Last year the adventurous New Inn-based firefighter, who joined the fire service when she was 18, went on a fact-finding mission to South Africa and North America.

She was chosen from nearly 1,000 competitors who applied to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for a travelling fellowship, which she used to do a comparative study of attacks on firefighters around the world.