Claire Fryer, PETA Australia’s campaign coordinator, may be a pussycat by day, but she’s a raging tiger by night. Claire is an accomplished fighter in boxing, Muay Thai and mixed martial arts (MMA), and most recently, she dispatched her experienced opponent in short order at the co-main event of the MMA event “Brace for War 17” – her biggest victory to date.

Claire’s success in martial arts comes as no surprise to her fellow vegans and PETA staffers. Plant foods provide athletes with all the nutrients that they need to stay healthy, competitive and strong – minus the saturated fat, cholesterol and other contaminants found in meat and dairy products, which could slow them down. And, of course, it probably helps that her coaches have a habit of telling her right before matches that they just saw her opponent “biting the heads off puppies”!

Although her work as a campaign coordinator for PETA Australia has certainly been less violent than her hobby, it can still get pretty physical. Her coordination of eye-catching public demonstrations has included wrangling PETA’s bikini-clad “Lettuce Ladies”, organising a human “barbecue” and rubbing bodypaint on naked male activists, among other things.

Fighting is Claire’s way of challenging herself and staying at a peak level of fitness (although she has been known to dig into a big dish of vegan coconut and cookie-dough ice cream after a weigh-in). When she isn’t in the office, out in the field, training or raising her fists in triumph in the ring, you’ll find Claire at home, offering loving care to her special-needs dog, Muppet, and any number of foster animals.

Claire, or as her teammates call her, “K.O. Bear”, has proved that anything that meat-eaters can do, she can do better. Are you ready to get into fighting shape? Take the Pledge to Go Veg today!

Posted by Ashley Fruno