Katalin Rodriguez-Ogren (maiden name Katalin Rodriguez Zamiar, best known as Katalin Zamiar) (born August 12, 1971 in Chicago) is a Cuban American martial artist, sportswriter, fitness instructor, gym owner and martial arts actress.
Video Katalin Zamiar
Biography
Katalin is a Chicago native. She grew up in downtown Chicago along with her two brothers Alex and Chris. She attended Ogden Elementary School and Francis W. Parker for high school and the University of Illinois for college.. She was raised in her fathers art/photo studio. Her father, Thomas Zamiar has been a successful artist and photographer in Chicago since 1965. Her mother Isis Rodriguez was a Cuban exile, who stood up against Castro's regime and escaped through the Peter Pan Operation. Katalin was originally enrolled in Ruth Page Ballet school with aspirations of becoming a ballerina. Then at the age of 9 her mother signed her up for karate. At that time, Katalin wanted to become a martial artist and boxer. Her inspiration were Sugar Ray Leonard and Bruce Lee. Her mother enrolled her in karate and she has not stopped training in martial arts and the combat sports since 1980.
Life and career
Katalin Zamiar holds a degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she became a forensic science teacher. She has studied martial arts since 1982 and is an accomplished martial artist holding black belts in kung-fu, taekwondo, G?j?-ry? karate and Sh?rin-ry? karate. She has owned POW! Mixed Martial Arts and Chicago Krav Maga training centers since 2001. Along with teaching at her training center in downtown Chicago, she has often covered the UFC 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, and has been featured in magazines such as Shape, Allure and Self. She has worked as an international fitness and martial arts presenter and has spent some time as a spokesperson for the Martial Arts brand Revgear. She has also written conditioning materials and manuals and can be seen in more than a dozen of workout fitness/martial arts videos. Her other endeavors have included a summer training camp for upcoming basketball players and she works extensively with many non for profits. In 2014, she wrote the book Weight Training for Martial Arts.
After graduating from college, Katalin began working at Chicago's East Bank Club. She stayed there teaching boxing and kickboxing for 7 years. During that time she acquired various fitness certifications and committed herself to the fitness and wellness industry. Since she was one of the few people teaching kickboxing at the time, she began writing the International Kickboxing Certification course which she presented with FITour in over 100 cities across America. It was this experience presenting that sparked her desire to continue being an educator for the fitness and martial arts industry.
Katalin operates her gym POW! Gym Chicago since 2001 has grown into a diverse training center that offers classes for kids and adults in sports performance, boxing, muay thai, kickboxing, fitness, strength and self-defense. In 2015, Katalin purchased the Parisi Speed School franchise for Chicago and merged into inside POW! Gym. Katalin now offers three departments inside of her facility, a full adult program with 45+ classes a week, a youth martial arts and fitness program and then the Parisi Speed School of Chicago, which is the most successful youth sports performance program in the US.
Acting
Zamiar remains best known for her characterizations of the three female ninja characters Kitana, Mileena, and Jade in the 1993 fighting video game Mortal Kombat II (her video shoot costume was Kitana's blue; John Tobias created Mileena and Jade by altering the character colors to purple and green). The character of Jade was her idea. In 1997, Zamiar, together with Philip Ahn (Shang Tsung in MKII) and Elizabeth Malecki (Sonya in Mortal Kombat), filed a lawsuit against Midway Games for royalties for the home ports of the game, a case in which Midway emerged victorious. In 1995, she and fellow Mortal Kombat actors Ho Sung Pak (Liu Kang in MKII and her boyfriend at the time), Daniel Pesina, and Phillip Ahn appeared in Thea Realm Fighters, a never-released fighting game produced exclusively for the Atari Jaguar, as well having been in the also unreleased game Chi Yong that was planned for the PlayStation in 1994. In 1996, she portrayed a Jade-like ninja woman character named Chae Lee in the fighting game Catfight. In 2003, she played a minor part in the low-budget 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 as Mileena does (the movie also starred Pesina, Pak, and another Mortal Kombat actor, Richard Divizio, all of whom are seen in MK-style clothing/roles throughout the movie). She has reunited with the rest of the MKII cast for the 20th anniversary event at the Galloping Ghost Arcade.
Maps Katalin Zamiar
References
External links
- Official website (archived)
- Katalin Rodriguez Ogren's blog
- Katalin Zamiar on IMDb
Source of article : Wikipedia
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