It was a memorable fight week for Shana Dobson at UFC on ESPN 15.
Not only did Dobson score one of the biggest upsets in UFC history when she stopped Mariya Agapova in the second round, she also just landed a job that she interviewed for in the lead up to her fight.
Juggling numerous things at once, Dobson (4-4 MMA, 2-3 UFC) had a lot of pressure on her. Entering her fight with Agapova on a three-fight losing skid, Dobson knew she was in a must-win situation.
Dobson thrived, and despite saving her UFC career and earning the “Performance of the Night” bonus, she still takes pride in helping others.
“I’m a behavior specialist. I have a full time job. I train full time and on top of that, I’m completing my masters, which should be done by December,” Dobson told MMA Junkie. “I work my tail to the bone. I like to keep busy. I like distractions. It works for me.”
She continued, “That week, a lot of great things happened for me. I interviewed like in the hotel, virtually while I was cutting weight, trying to make sure that they can’t tell that I’m cutting weight, and my brain is all foggy, and I interviewed for this position while I was out in Vegas, and I started today. I’m doing virtual training and pretty much I work with individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities, and I work as a counselor, support them and my background, I was a teacher, and I also work with kids with developmental disabilities. So anything I could do for the people, that’s all I’m about.”
Dobson credits her recent move to Elevation Fight Team in Colorado, as well as her mental preparation, for allowing her to remain level headed, despite all the odds being stacked against her.
“I’ve been doing a lot of mental training, and this is something that I haven’t been doing before that I’m gonna continue to do, that I feel like a lot of fighters should add to their training, to their physical training,” Dobson said.
“I believe that the mental aspect is just as important as the physical, so I tried to use that mental preparation and to try and combat the fact that, yeah, I had a lot of pressure going in. Yeah, that was probably gonna be my last fight if I lost it. Yeah, Mariya was a big prospect. Yeah, I was a huge underdog, but the fact that I was so mentally prepared, so physically prepared, it was just there’s no other outcome but to get out of this with the W.”
How a huge upset, bonus and new job capped off an incredible week for UFC’s Shana Dobson
