![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/3506453e304f6ef1c16dfaa73be41921.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nA beautician has told how a single punch from an MMA fighter on a night out changed her life forever.<\/p>\n
Anne Marie Boyle was knocked unconscious after turning down Sean McInnes’ advances in a pub in September 2024.<\/p>\n
The mother-of-two, who said she was “lucky to be alive”, suffered a broken eye socket and cheekbone.<\/p>\n
But the attack also left her with a brain injury and subsequent seizures which led to her losing her business, her ability to drive and her confidence.<\/p>\n
This story contains images of injuries some readers may find upsetting.<\/p>\n
McInnes – who had competed in a major Muay Thai competition – was jailed for 21 months in March.<\/p>\n
Anne Marie, a beauty and complementary therapist with her own successful business, was at a pub in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, with her cousins on the night of the incident.<\/p>\n
She told BBC Scotland News it was a bar she would not usually go to, but they had gone to see a psychic show.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old said a quiet night later turned into a life-changing nightmare.<\/p>\n
“My daughter had football the next day, so I knew I was driving and I wasn’t actually drinking a lot that night,” she said.<\/p>\n
“This boy kept approaching the table. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He just wouldn’t leave us alone.”<\/p>\n
Anne Marie said she had never met him before.<\/p>\n
“Looking back now there were certainly warning signs – ignoring boundaries.<\/p>\n
“Someone asked me, do you think he just didn’t understand no?<\/p>\n
“He did understand no – it just wasn’t the answer that he wanted.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sean McInnes was a trained MMA fighter who had competed in the Lion Fight 68 event, a major Muay Thai competition. [BBC]<\/p>\n
When the pub closed, Anne Marie and her friends went to leave and walk home.<\/p>\n
She said to McInnes, “Please, just go the other way.”<\/p>\n
But he continued to harass them.<\/p>\n
Anne Marie said: “Verbal aggression, just shouting, screaming in our faces, towering over us, wouldn’t let us go by.<\/p>\n
“Looking back it was only going to go two ways – he was getting his own way, or that was going to happen. So it just escalated.”<\/p>\n
She said said McInnes – who had competed in the Lion Fight 68 – pushed her cousin so hard “she was screaming”.<\/p>\n
Seconds later he punched Anne Marie in the face.<\/p>\n
She added: “I was knocked unconscious.<\/p>\n
“Immediately after that he knocked another boy unconscious.”<\/p>\n
What they didn’t know then is that McInnes was a trained MMA fighter.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never felt pain like that,” Anne Marie said.<\/p>\n
“I think he knew precisely where to hit me.”<\/p>\n
Her face and teeth were agony and she discovered later from a maxillofacial surgeon, that he had knocked her vagus nerve out of place.<\/p>\n
It is a vessel which connects the brain to various organs, including the heart, lungs, and digestive tract.<\/p>\n
She added: “I remember a police officer coming up to and saying to me, are you ok?<\/p>\n
“The officer said I was bleeding from the back of my head.”<\/p>\n
Anne Marie was in hospital for three weeks and then diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), which causes the brain to stop sending signals to the body.<\/p>\n
She now gets involuntary tremors and suffers chronic pain.<\/p>\n
The whole ordeal has had a huge impact on her life.<\/p>\n
Unable to work, she has lost her business and her driving licence was revoked because she is not safe to get behind the wheel.<\/p>\n
Anne Marie said: “My life is completely different.<\/p>\n
“I can’t go out on my own. My anxiety is so bad and I don’t know what people’s intentions are now.”<\/p>\n
She added that her mental symptoms were sometimes worse than her physical ones.<\/p>\n
Anne Marie also said that having to go through the court process and see McInnes’ face again was “horrendous”.<\/p>\n
McInnes pleaded his innocence until the day of the trial when he finally admitted the assault.<\/p>\n
Anne Marie was disappointed he was not given a longer sentence.<\/p>\n
“He will get out and he will go back to his family and his children,” she said.<\/p>\n
“He’ll be able to drive, go back to his job.<\/p>\n
“And I can’t work because I could drop at any time.”<\/p>\n
She now wants to make the public aware of the risks people like McInnes pose.<\/p>\n
And she wants to make the world safer for women like her two daughters.<\/p>\n
Anne Marie said: “I’ve got two children that need me and I’ve got a lot of people that love me around about me.<\/p>\n
“That love that has what has got me through this.<\/p>\n
“I’m telling this story because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else that might not have the support system, that might not be strong, that might not have the strength.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A beautician has told how a single punch from an MMA fighter on a night out changed her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[1537,49,48,641,219328,638,20154,219327,82,169520],"class_list":{"0":"post-570261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-anne-marie","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-mcinnes","13":"tag-mma","14":"tag-mma-fighter","15":"tag-sean-mcinnes","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-successful-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}