Jayde Sheeley has been working on her mindset ahead of LFA 160
Interview with Jayde Sheeley above
Jayde Sheeley has been fighting for nearly a decade in mixed martial arts, and she’s finally changing her gameplan heading into her bout against Diamond Long at LFA 160 in Owensboro, Kentucky.
This will be her second bout for LFA, as she came up short against Nejra Repp in her pro debut at LFA 152 in February.
“Even right before my fight, I’ve been working a lot on my mindset,” Sheeley said when she joined the Ohio MMA Podcast. “I didn’t have a routine before my fights. Most people that fight, we fight because we like fighting. You don’t really have to think about it, you could just go in.”
“For a long time as an amateur I could just brawl, I didn’t really need a lot of technique,” Sheeley said. “I could just beat girls up – I was tough.”
Jayde had her last amateur bout in 2019, and then spent nearly four years attempting to make her pro debut.
“I knew the girl I was fighting for LFA was going to be tough, but it was dropout after dropout,” Sheeley said. “I couldn’t be picky at that point. I remember getting on the plane, and I was about to cry. Not even fear, but I had been trying to get a fight for four years, and I was like ‘It’s all here.'”
She talked about being a smarter fighter at this point in her career as well.
“Now I’m going in, I’m just going to fight,” Sheeley said. “My technique that I know I can do, and I’m not afraid to make a mistake or let people down.”
Sheeley is facing a familiar foe at LFA 160, as she’ll take on fellow Ohio native Diamond Long. They’ve both been competing on the regional scene in the Buckeye State for almost the same amount of time, but they’ve never cross paths until now.
“It’s really funny, we’ve actually be joking for the last year like, ‘You should fight Diamond on LFA,'” Sheeley said. “And we were like, we’re not fighting. In our amateur runs we were always different weight classes, I never cut weight so I was always at 125.”
Jayde also discusses her first weight cut to strawweight in her amateur debut a decade ago, her coach and father not wanting her to fight, and her career as a police officer.
