San Diego — Strawweight Ashley Thiner made a successful professional debut at Bellator San Diego on Saturday, earning a TKO victory over Aysia Cortez, who was also making her pro debut on the night.
Earning a finish on a big stage is always ideal for any debuting fighter (Thiner had a successful amateur career as well), and given that Bellator MMA is owned by the PFL, there’s always the possibility that she jumps into bigger things, perhaps by way of the PFL Challenger Series.
“I hope so. That would be fantastic. I am a 115’er, so we’ll see what shakes out,” Thiner told media outlets including Cageside Press backstage at the Pechanga Arena following the fight. “I’m always willing and ready to fight more fights. And the more opportunities I get, the more you’re going to see me perform ride those opportunities and those occasions.”
Asked about her emotions during the contest, which ended off a left hook that led to ground n’ pound in the second round, Thiner noted that “I’m a very calculated fighter. Emotions aren’t something that I try to base everything off of. That being said, the first time I felt something was when I saw her bleed. That’s the visceral part that you can’t separate from. There’s the intelligent part of me, and there’s the visceral part of me, and fighting is a combination of both. And I think mastering myself in those moments is probably one of the funnest parts.”
And so while she doesn’t try to fight emotionally, Thiner would admit that “that being said, I felt something. When I saw her dripping blood on the canvas, I had her bent over I remember on the cage – because I only remember flashes most of the time. And I was like ‘is that my blood?’ because I had a little scrape from bike riding last week. I was like ‘is that my blood? No, I think that’s her blood.’ And then I started getting excited in the first round. So I did feel some excitement. I’m like ‘I think that’s her blood’ and we separated and I saw her nose bleed. And I was like okay, it’s time to turn on. I landed one, let’s land some more.”
Thiner described herself as giddy when she later dropped her hands and threw a teep kick. As for the finishing sequence, she told herself “I need to empty my gas tank right now. I don’t care how tired this is going to make me, I need to just start punching as hard and as fast as I can.”
Watch the full Bellator San Diego post-fight press scrum with Ashley Thiner above.
