| Katalin Zamiar | |
|---|---|
| Born | Katalin Rodriguez Zamiar August 14, 1973 Chicago |
| Height | 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) |
| Website | |
| https://www.katalinusa.com | |
Katalin Rodriguez-Ogren (maiden name Katalin Rodriguez Zamiar, best known as Katalin Zamiar) (born August 14, 1973 in Chicago) is an American martial artist, sportswriter and actress.
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Biography [link]
Katalin Zamiar taught an undergraduate forensic science course at the University of Illinois and holds a degree in anthropology from the same university. She has studied martial arts since 1982 and is an accomplished martial artist holding black belts in taekwondo, Gōjū-ryū karate and Shōrin-ryū karate. As of 2010, she is the owner of POW! Mixed Martial Arts[1] and Chicago Krav Maga[2] training centers.
Along with teaching at her training center in downtown Chicago, Zamiar often covers the Ultimate Fighting Championship for Grappling magazine, focusing primarily on features and interviews. She has published more than 150 articles in various martial arts magazines including Black Belt and Inside Kung Fu, among others, and has been featured in Shape, Allure and Self magazines. Katalin is an international fitness and martial arts presenter teaching at various conferences from Taipei to Aruba, and has spent some time as a spokeperson for the MMA gear firm Revgear. She also writes conditioning materials and manuals and can be seen in more than a dozen of workout fitness/martial arts videos. Her other endeavors include a summer training camp for upcoming basketball players and a non-profit charity M.A.K.E.[3]
Video game and film roles [link]
Katalin Zamiar is best known for her characterizations of the three female ninja characters Kitana, Mileena, and Jade in the 1993 video game Mortal Kombat II[4] (her video shoot costume was Kitana's blue; John Tobias created Mileena and Jade by altering the character colors to purple and green). In 1997, Zamiar, together with Philip Ahn (Shang Tsung in MKII) and Elizabeth Malecki (Sonya in Mortal Kombat), filed a lawsuit against Midway Games over lack of royalties for the home ports of the game, a case in which Midway emerged victorious.[5]
In 1995, she and fellow Mortal Kombat actors Ho Sung Pak (Liu Kang in the game and her boyfriend at the time[6]), Daniel Pesina, and Phillip Ahn appeared in Thea Realm Fighters, a never-released fighting game produced exclusively for the Atari Jaguar. Later she also made two martial arts conditioning videos with Pak. In 1996 she played a Jade-like[7] ninja woman character named Chae Lee in the PC all-women fighting game Catfight. In 2003, she played a minor part in the martial arts film Book of Swords. In a cameo nod to her Mortal Kombat alter egos, Katalin once again portrayed a female ninja character, dressed in similar clothing as her MKII counterparts and even wielding two sai like Mileena does (the movie also starred Pesina, Pak, and another Mortal Kombat actor, Richard Divizio, who are also seen in MK-style clothing/roles throughout the movie).[8]
References [link]
- ^ POW! Mixed Martial Arts
- ^ Chicago Krav Maga
- ^ KATALIN's BIO
- ^ Video Gamer News: Mortal Kombat's Kitana - POW! Mixed Martial Arts
- ^ "Mortal Kombatants killed in kourt". IP Councelors. 1997-06-16. Archived from the original on 2007-10-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20071006175511/https://www.ipcounselors.com/19970616.htm#a2.
- ^ Mortal Kombat II Behind the Scenes, Video Games, April 1994
- ^ CatFight: The Ultimate Female Fighting Game - Windows Cover Art - MobyGames
- ^ Mortal Kombat stars reunite for this low budget - Far East Films
