Prior to her victory over Monica Lovato to claim the King of the Cage title, Sarah    “Too Sweet” Alpar had to sign a contract that obligated her to defend her title within a certain amount of time if she won.

A road bump in the form of a sprained medial collateral ligament and a fractured foot presented itself just as she was gearing up her training in preparation for her title defense against Brenda Gonzales.

“It wasn’t anything huge,” Alpar said of her injury, “but it did put me out for about six weeks for my MCL and they added about three weeks for my foot, so about nine weeks.  It made me nervous, because I didn’t want to lose my belt, but I did have plenty of time [to recover].  It just kind of made me nervous.”

On Oct. 6, 2012, at King of the Cage: Stranglehold at the Winstar World Casino in Thackerville, Okla., Alpar went all five rounds with Gonzales, but she lost her title belt in a unanimous decision.

“Losing my belt, that hurt,” Alpar said.  “It hurt as much as it was kind of a relief.  The pressure was off – you have a belt and you have to defend it and people are just looking at you.  I would get messages from fighters saying, ‘Hey, I want to fight you,’ because they want that title.”

Alpar wouldn’t fight again for nearly nine months, and her next bout would be against Jocelyn “Lights Out” Lybarger, an opponent who had won her first two career matches in impressive fashion.

In training for the fight, Alpar had to deal with the loss of her grandmother.  It was a tough time for something that dramatic to happen, because she simply did not feel she could properly mourn the loss of someone so close to her with so much going on in her life at that time.

She instead used it as fuel.

The event was King of the Cage:  Heated Fury in Scottsdale, Ariz., on July 20, 2013.  In an online poll asking people to predict the winners for the night’s events, ninety-seven percent of poll takers had picked Lybarger to defeat Alpar.  97 percent of those poll takers were dead wrong.

Round 1:  “First thing that happens is I go out there to touch fists and I kind of miss.  You can even see it in the video, I’m doing this weird little stance thing, it was awkward.  For the round itself, in the first round you gotta feel the other person out.  It’s a lot of counteracting what the other person does.  That’s pretty much what I did in the first round.”

Round 2:  “I felt really good.  I felt loosened up, I felt great.  I still felt like I had all my energy and more relaxed than I did in the first round.  I ended up taking her to the ground – I got a headlock on her and I kind of stuck with it.  I ended up getting full mount on her and I tried to do a couple of things, but I couldn’t finish them.  I spent most of my time on top, and I really felt like I dominated the first two rounds.”

Round 3:  “I felt like I lost that third round.  My mind just went right out the window.  The wraps under my gloves started coming undone, so the ref stopped the fight and I had to go get them fixed.  One of the guys in my corner, Brian Pena, was trying to rip the tape off with his teeth – he didn’t have any scissors.  It was only ten seconds that that really took, but within those ten seconds my body started cooling off and things started slowing down.  I was just kind of surviving at the end and that’s when I got really jacked up.  She got some good hits on me, I’m not gonna lie.”

Lybarger didn’t jack her up enough, however, as Alpar was awarded the victory in a unanimous decision.

So where does Sarah Alpar go from here?

“Really, it’s more like, ‘Where do I not go?’” Alpar said.  “I feel like I’m at the top of my game.  I got an offer to fight Holly Holm and I turned it down.  I would have only had about six weeks to train for [that fight].”

Alpar didn’t feel it was in her best interest to turn around and immediately fight someone as prestigious as Holm, who is an 18-time world champion boxer in three separate divisions and has won all five of her MMA matches via knockout.  Neither did her doctor, as he told Alpar she could not participate in full contact for six weeks after her fight against Lybarger due to a concussion.

So “Too Sweet” continues to train, preparing for her next bout that is not yet scheduled at this time.  In the meantime, she continues to live up to her nickname, caring for underprivileged children at Presbyterian Home for Children in Amarillo.

To those who know her, there is no surprise in how much of her time she gives to others.  She has always been willing to share and be an individual who helps others improve, whether it’s helping Joe Stafford train wrestlers at Tascosa High School or helping underprivileged children enjoy their childhood.

Alpar can be looked up to as a role model by just about everyone as someone who consistently puts others in front of herself, and someone who does not let their profession change who they are at heart.

She may be an animal in the cage, but on the outside, she is just too sweet.