Shanelle
Dyer, who made a spectacular debut at
UFC London, used to initially hate MMA.
Dyer was in love with the striking arts, having trained in muay
thai since the age of 8. While Dyer still loves muay thai, she
understood at some point that there was not much money to be made
in the sport. Dyer had to choose between transitioning to boxing or
MMA, and chose MMA as she didn’t want to give up kicking.
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Dyer admits that she initially found the grappling part of MMA a
little “fruity.” However, she started appreciating the nuances of
grappling once she started learning the art.
Gaining an Appreciation
“I used to hate MMA,” Dyer said on “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “I’ve done muay thai
for so long, and I love muay thai. Muay thai is beautiful, muay
thai is amazing. Unfortunately, you can’t make money in muay thai.
So I transitioned to MMA when I was 17-18. It was either boxing or
MMA. But I love kicking too much to do boxing. So I chose MMA at
the end of the day. I just thought MMA was a bit weird. I thought
grappling was a bit fruity because I didn’t understand it. So I was
like, I don’t want to watch people hug people. I just want to watch
striking, so watch muay thai or K-1. I started MMA, and then I
started appreciating how hard MMA is, how hard jiu-jitsu is, when I
started learning.”
Dyer (7-1) suffered her only career loss against Carol Folo on
Dana White’s Contender Series last year. Despite coming up
short on the Contender Series, Dyer earned a contract and made her
debut in front of a home crowd at UFC London last year. Dyer
dropped her opponent, Ravena
Oliveira, with knees in the second round and finished her with
vicious ground-and-pound. “The Nightmare” also earned a $100,000
“Performance of the Night” bonus for her debut win.