Las Vegas, NV — Ahead of UFC Vegas 53, Shanna Young knew changes had to be made.
Mired in a slump, having won just one of her past four fights dating back to her 2019 appearance on Dana White’s Contender Series, Young (8-4) had come to dread walking into the cage.
“I had gotten to the point where, I’m sure a lot of people get to that point, you feel nerves and dread when you walk in the cage,” she told media outlets including Cageside Press following her TKO win against Gina Mazany at UFC Vegas 53 on Saturday. “It’s almost like you don’t want to be there anymore, and I got to that point.”
Ahead of the match-up with Mazany, which saw her mount the Glory MMA fighter from the back and rain down ground n’ pound to secure the finish, Young made a key change, heading to Syndicate MMA in Las Vegas to get the work in.
The result, “It was a totally different feeling, totally different vibes this time,” she stated. “I felt so good from the start, I knew it was going to be different.”
Expanding on her struggles prior to Saturday night, Young explained that “I think for me it was a confidence thing. I had some really big fights that I had lost, and lost back-to-back. I knew I needed to do something different. I needed to make some changes in the way that I was training, and the things that I was doing leading into it. I think coming out to Syndicate [in Las Vegas] and training with these guys out here was the thing that I needed to do to change my entire mindset.”
Now, she hopes to stay on with the team full time. “I’m working on getting out here as soon as I can.”
By the time the fight went to the mat in the second round on Saturday, Mazany appeared to have little left. The position was one Young had prepared for.
“That’s just kind of what we trained for. I didn’t want to end up on the bottom when she went for the takedown. I just knew, give it all to end up on top. And once I did and settled in, settled my hips in, that’s what we had trained pretty much the whole camp to do,” said Young. “To just get on top and settle down and not been on wild on top as I have been in the past.”
Watch the full UFC Vegas 53 post-fight media appearance with Shanna Young above.
