{"id":867268,"date":"2026-08-22T10:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/867268\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T10:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T10:14:10","slug":"shanelle-dyer-ufc-star-credits-mma-with-keeping-her-off-the-wrong-path","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/867268\/","title":{"rendered":"Shanelle Dyer: UFC star credits MMA with keeping her off the ‘wrong path’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shanelle Dyer’s parents always encouraged her to play sports because they were worried about what the alternative could be.<\/p>\n

In March, the Londoner introduced herself on the world stage as she knocked out Ravena Oliveira in stunning fashion in the second round on her UFC debut.<\/p>\n

The performance follows the best part of a decade in sport, with Dyer eventually finding her home in mixed martial arts after trying ballet, gymnastics and football.<\/p>\n

She grew up on a housing estate in west London which was troubled by knife crime and Dyer, now 25, believes she could have gone “down the wrong path” if not for her parents’ encouragement.<\/p>\n

“Some of it was difficult, especially when you go to school and you find out people in your class got stabbed – some people actually died from my neighbourhood,” Dyer told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

“That’s heartbreaking because we grew up in the same place, and that could have been me if I went down the wrong path.<\/p>\n

“It just happened my parents and family and people around me put me on a great path. It just motivated me, I didn’t want to be in that situation, I wanted to be in a better situation.”<\/p>\n

In 2020, Dyer lost her friend and MMA mentor Jahreau Shepherd when he was stabbed to death by his brother at his 30th birthday party.<\/a><\/p>\n

Dyer was at the party, but left an hour before the incident happened.<\/p>\n

On Saturday in Las Vegas, Dyer’s nickname “The Nightmare” will be read out by announcer Bruce Buffer before her strawweight bout against American Elise Reed – an alias she adopted from Shepherd to help keep his memory alive.<\/p>\n

“We had the same dream. I remember talking about how we were going to be UFC fighters, UFC champions, walk out to big crowds, that was our dream,” said Dyer.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t get to live out his dream but I can so I’m gonna take him with me.<\/p>\n

“Jay is always with me. In my corner, every morning if I don’t want to go training I can hear ‘get up, you get to live your life – do it’. He’s always in the back of my mind.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shanelle Dyer’s parents always encouraged her to play sports because they were worried about what the alternative could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-867268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867268","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=867268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}