Niamh Kinehan was at the top of the Muay Thai world. At 135lbs, she is the current holder of the WBC, WMO, and ISKA titles. However, despite being at the top of the game, she’s decided to leave it all behind. This weekend, she makes her MMA debut at Oktagon 74, which others have been pushing for for some time.
“You know what, some people always said ‘you should go into MMA’ and I was like, nah. Then they’re like, ‘you should do boxing’. And I don’t know, it’s like, you think your career is never going to end in anything, don’t you?” Kinehan said. “It wasn’t like ever a mindset of I’m going to be an MMA superstar. It’s just, it’s fell into place, it’s felt nice and now I’m doing it. I’m excited to see where it takes me.”
Part of the delay in the decision was that she had goals in the Muay Thai. However, not only did she meet those goals, but she was beginning to run out of next steps.
“I didn’t want to put like anything else in my head until I’d completed my first goal. My goal was to complete Thai boxing before I think about anything else, and that’s what happened,” she said. “I was running out of opponents. Like I’ve never, never ducked an opponent anyway, and I fought everyone and beat 99% of people that were in front of me, apart from back in the early days of my pro career. That was when the losses were there, but I had a good run. I think I had like a 20-win streak. So it was just like, now’s the time.”
Of course, like anyone making the switch, the transition was not an easy one. Kinehan admits that the beginning steps of mixed martial arts were all tricky for her at first.
“Everything… I’m not flexible at all. And some of the, some of the positions you are in MMA, it’s like, wow, how’d you get into them positions? Like even the lads laugh at me,” Kinehan laughed. “But you know what? I’m getting better. I’m getting used to it. And my game’s changing – it’s coming together nicely.”
We’ll first see how she’s put it all together at Oktagon 74 this Saturday. She takes on Michaela Hlaváčiková as part of the prelims, which start at 12pm EST.
