Irish mixed martial artist Shauna Bannon recently shared a remarkable story about competing for a championship belt while seven weeks pregnant, a situation she only discovered two weeks before her next scheduled bout.
Bannon’s path to professional combat began in her father’s kickboxing gym at age three. While she trained from an early age, it wasn’t until around 11 or 12 that she became truly serious about competition.
“I’d say 11, 12. Like I was there the whole time. But like I didn’t actually be like that spit mode, you know, like where I was like I want to beat everybody. That didn’t happen for a few years,” she explained.
After years of kickboxing success, including competing on Ireland’s senior national team from age 15, Bannon switched to taekwondo to pursue Olympic dreams. However, after 18 months of intense competition and travel, she found herself unhappy with the sport.
“I was like, ‘Right, this is what I’m doing. I’m all in.’ But then it got to a stage where like I just wasn’t really enjoying it,” she recalled.
The transition to MMA happened almost accidentally. While training at a facility where coach Paddy Holohan’s team was temporarily based, Bannon became curious about what she saw.
Her first experience in an MMA class resulted in her inadvertently dislocating another student’s arm during drilling. “I was being a mess. I didn’t know what I was doing and I was like, ‘I am so sorry.’ But then after that class I was like, ‘I actually love this.'”
The career change required significant sacrifice. Bannon left her position at Deloitte in finance to work part-time at a float tank facility while training full-time. “It was like 9 to 5 kind of, yeah. So I used to go to the half six class,” she said of her previous schedule, which included morning and evening training sessions around her corporate job.
Her most harrowing experience came during an amateur title match against Dakota Ditcheva in England. The weight cut proved nearly catastrophic. Competing at 125 pounds (56.7 kilograms), Bannon and her team attempted bath cuts for the first time.
“I got out of the bath and clearly passed out. Sarah thought I fell asleep, but I was passed out on the bed,” she revealed.
The situation worsened when she initially missed weight by 0.3 pounds. After finally making weight following hours in a sauna, Bannon hadn’t properly refueled before discovering the match would be five rounds instead of the expected three. “We found out on the day. I was just like, ‘For goodness sake, right, we have to do this.'”
She survived the five-round war, but the aftermath proved equally challenging. “I just remember I cried for days. The hormones were through the roof,” Bannon said.
When coach Paddy Holohan suggested she pull out of her next scheduled match two weeks later, she initially resisted. However, something felt wrong.
“I just remember feeling strange and I was like, but I didn’t get periods because when I used to cut weight in taekwondo, he used to make me fi ght at 52 kilos,” she explained. Previous harsh weight cuts had disrupted her cycle, so she hadn’t immediately recognized the signs. A pregnancy test revealed she was expecting.
“I rang the clinic and I was like, ‘Look, I’m after competing in an MMA bout and I’m like it’s saying I’m pregnant.’ And they were like, ‘Come on in.’ So I went in and they were like, ‘Yeah, you’re pregnant.’ I was like, ‘What the heck?'”
Her primary concern was the baby’s health after the intense physical trauma of the weight cut and match. “I was like, ‘Is he okay?’ Like, because I was after going through so much trauma.”
Now a mother to five-year-old Jayce, Bannon has found balance between motherhood and competing at the highest level. “I get to drop him to school. I get to collect him from school. I bring him to his hobbies every day, and then in the evening my mom will come over to my house when I train.”
She’s enrolled Jayce in both kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, though she’s clear about her hopes. “I hope he never competes, and it’s probably a recipe for trouble because he does kickboxing and jiu-jitsu.”
Her UFC debut at the O2 Arena in London brought intense pressure after significant media attention in Ireland. The match didn’t go as planned, leading to what she describes as a dark period. “I went into a dark, dark place. Like honestly, I was just like it was rough.”
A trip to Thailand and winning the jiu-jitsu world championships at purple belt helped her recovery, as did a shift in perspective. “I started practicing gratitude. I’d do five things every morning that I was grateful for.”
Now approaching 30, Bannon has matured her approach to training and recovery. “I’m a lot more precious with my time in training. I definitely used to overtrain. I think like youth was on my side. Like that was five years ago. Do you know what I mean? I was younger, like I recovered faster, but now I’m like every class I go to, every drilling session, every sparring, like it’s precise in what I’m doing.”
For young women considering MMA, Bannon offers straightforward advice: “Make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. I think that’s a big one that nobody really talks about. Some people like the idea of it. It’s really, really hard.”
She also emphasizes the importance of having the right team. “I think the guidance that I have from Paddy, like he’s not only my coach, he’s my friend. So he wants what’s best for me.”
