Shane Hurley | GladiatEire FC 1

Ringkasan

Fresh off a hard-earned win at GladiatEire Fighting Championship, this interview we get into it itwith a fighter who’s more than just skilled — he’s thoughtful, humble, and committed to the journey. From karate beginnings to embracing the grind of wrestling and grappling, he’s…

Transkrip (youtube_captions)

[Music] One of these days I will get an assistant. Yeah, 100%. Somebody will throw in a CV there if they see it. Yeah, exactly. Please hiring now. Come back confidential assistant production. All you have to do is just we'll work for free and you got the job. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Ideally, you'll pay me something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would be even better. Um, okay. Look, first of all, congratulations. Thanks very much, sir. Cheers. Tell us real quick, you know, how'd that feel to have your hand raised like that? Yeah, it looked really good. Like leading up to this, I knew I was in against a quality opponent like, and there's definitely times previously that I would have shied away from challenges like that. But I really want to put myself out there this year like I can take the hardest test that I could get. And I suppose I put in a lot of preparation, make myself as ready for it as possible. But I did always know I was kind of up against it. Like I seriously respect Harry. I watched his fights like, you know, and I I like his style and everything. Uh but I knew he'd be dangerous in there. There wasn't any clear pack to victory, you know, but I was delighted. I could come away with a win and come away with a win against somebody so good like, you know, that I appreciate the style of and the skill of. So, no, it's light of an hour, right? It definitely means more than few my other maybe like, you know, u was there anything that uh did he surprise you at all? Um, look, I kind of I expected everything that he came with. I knew that he'd go for the calf kicks there. Yeah. Handed a few of them. I didn't really feel him to be honest, but I heard his corner saying he didn't like that and throw him more. So, I was like, he's really going to hunt for him now. But the offensive wrestling like I thought he might have held out on the feet maybe a bit more, but he surprised me with some of his shots. He disguises them well. He uses the striking to set them up and I thought he would have tried to take me down against the fence a bit more when he was shooting down in the open. And you'll notice like I didn't put up much resistance against a few of them and nearly looked like a pull guard, but they were smooth shots and he disguised them well. So, he surprised me with the offensive wrestling in the open. All right. Well, uh, was there anything that you did that you thought maybe you wouldn't do or that, uh, came a little bit easier than you thought? I thought it would have been harder to find him with my boxing. Okay. I thought I would have landed a couple of jabs and lead hooks, but I didn't think I find the hard shots as easy as I did. Like I I found hard right hands and left hooks, and I think I hurt them a little bit more than I thought I would have. Uh, I thought he'd be a little bit more uh evasive in terms of the striking on the feet, so they landed a little bit handier. Um, but he was tough to take down. He had good cardio like and he surprised me with his wrestling. So I suppose it didn't go exactly how I thought it would but uh there was certain things that work for me all right like you know. Awesome. Would you be more of a boxer or do you do you prefer kind of stand up game? Me like Okay. So initially I definitely would have considered myself a striker. Okay. Uh I come from a karate background like you know did love karate do a lot of karate and then uh I fought in Muay Thai there as well. Oh excellent. So I was definitely coming over from a striking background. definitely considered myself a karate and Muay Thai fighter that was doing MMA like you know avoiding the takedown avoiding the ground game avoiding the wrestling but then after my first fight I started to embrace the wrestling and the grappling more and stop viewing myself as a striker in MMA and start looking at myself more as an MMA fighter and that was like due to influence from my coach Dylan there recommended like you know if you want to make yourself harder to take down you got to learn offensive wrestling and be confident in your ground game as well so I definitely see myself as more of a mixed martial artist now and I'm comfortable on the around on the feet against the cage anywhere. But initially I definitely would have been more a striker, but now I see myself as a wellrounded fighter. It was Did you find that transition a little difficult or did you kind of just embrace it right away? To be honest, I loved grappling straight away like I was actually fighting in Muay Thai and I was going to the jiu-jitsu and wrestling classes, okay, and Dylan was trying to get me to fight MMA and I tell him I'd never fight MMA, like you know. So I just really enjoyed it. But I did always see myself as an outsider in the cage. Like I'm a striker trying to grapple as opposed to embracing it wholly and seeing that this is a part of my game that I can use offensively. And in the third round there, he was telling me like this guy's taking you down and if you strike with him, he might be backing him up on the feet, but he's still going to take you down. He's going to win the round. He told me, "Go out and get a takedown straight away." So in the third round, that's sort of to my benefit there that I was able to go out and push for that take down. That's something a year ago I couldn't see myself doing. just from Dylan's input there and wrestling my brother Brian there very strong wrestler as well and all the lads up the gym mazur Tom Buckley Roy Mccarti Roy all these lads like you know I was able to go out in the third round and actually pursue the taked down and I think if I didn't have that ability I would have left that fight behind me there you know right on you said said your brother's here with you yeah yeah both of my brothers younger or older that's my younger brother there but I have two brothers here with me my older brother Kum's a year older than me he's a Muay Thai fighter as well he started fighting Muay Thai there family fighters then yeah yeah and then my younger brother Brian is uh like obviously great Britain but obvious my worst nemesis there in the gym as well like you know he puts a beating on me there on the feet against the cage on the ground definitely the best training partner you could ask for you know he can give it to you everywhere like so yeah he's here as well and he was in my corner with Dylan so very lucky to have the two lads at home like you know h how does uh how does mom and dad uh feel about a family of fighters like look dad dad dad dad's our biggest supporter mom as well in a different way I suppose but like dad got us into martial arts when one of your He said like if you want to be able to look after yourself in the life, you got to be able to defend yourself. The only way to do that is learn comat sports or martial arts. So he took us down. He made sure we learned it. Now we stuck to it a little bit more than maybe he thought we would have. But uh he's been so good. Like he's finished work before, drove all the way to Belfast on his own, watched just my fight, and as soon as my fight was over, he turned around and drove home and get up for work at 5:00 the next morning. Like you know that. And then our mom at home, she doesn't have the stomach to watch it. Like, but she supports us massively. Like, you know, we couldn't do it without her support either. So, without my family behind me, like, you know, none of this would be going on. And they're definitely the the biggest part of it. Like, you know, I just kind of go to training, do what I'm told. But without their support, I wouldn't be at all, you know. Amazing. Amazing. Um, what what's next for you? What what do you got next? I'm actually booked. I'm booked for a fight coming up there in Cork in seven weeks time on Elite Fighting Championships against Taylor. It's actually for the title there as well. That's awesome. That's the next one. Um, it's my first time fighting with another fight book straight away already. So, but that's all those things for me. Yeah, that's good. Um, you know, it keeps you uh keeps you motivated and keeps that discipline in check, too. Yeah. Yeah. When there's guys out there in the country trying to take your head off if they get the chance. Definitely pushes you to work hard in the gym like, you know. Right on. Um, okay. So, one of the things I do with my podcast is um I like to talk about kind of like the the mental health aspects of combat sports. Um, can you just just give me something uh personal to yourself where comat sports kind of helped you? Yeah, like it's funny because I was actually literally just saying this in the dressing room about an hour ago before I came out. I was like, if you can deal with the stress of a fight coming up and everything that goes along with it, everything else that stresses you out in your life seems a little bit smaller. You know, like if I didn't have this this weekend, I'd be thinking about work tomorrow and things going on at home and social things and things with different people in your life. But if you can have like if you can handle the stress of a cage fight, everything else seems just a little bit smaller, you know? So, uh it's definitely helped me get me a bit more of the kind of hakuna matata mentality like you know what I mean? So, love it. I love it. All right. Um and then if you can give one piece of advice to someone who maybe they're a bit intimidated or a bit nervous about joining their local gym, what would you say to them? What I'd say is like these shows give a very poor representation of what martial arts is. Like this is it at the competitive level. If you go down to your local gym, you're not going to get the head punched off you. You're not going to get slammed on the mat and ragged all around like we do when we're competing here at the high level. That's not the game. Like, you can go down, you could compete, you could train martial arts for years without ever getting punched in the face. It's not like there's so many benefits to training in martial arts beyond competing. And it's huge for any individual. Like, so if you just want to get in shape, get fit, get healthy, if you want to learn how to defend yourself or if you want to increase your confidence or anything like that, I think martial arts is a great choice. It's not as intimidating as people make out to be. We've got loads of people training in Samson and Cork that don't fight. They don't even spar. They're just down there to socialize the people to get fit, to look after themselves physically and mentally. And like we have a majority of people in most gyms are like that. And a small minority then compete. So it's not a thing whereby that's what you're going to be getting if you join a gym. There's a lot more to it than that. And I'd highly encourage anybody to get involved in a gym. Try it out. See what it's like. It's not for you. You can always leave it and you won't have blasted anything, but uh there's huge benefits to get from it like you know. Right on. All right, you guys heard it here first. Gladiator FC. Um look, man, I appreciate your time. Congratulations again. Um safe dra or safe travel home. Yeah, thank you. Was that like a 5h hour drive? Uh I don't know. We're going to stop for some food and coffee and stuff anyway, so we'll probably drag the air, but uh you probably get it done in 4 hours or I think Dylan actually has a record on it as well. But yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. Excellent, man. But I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Excellent. Let's go.