Shana Dobson Vows to Be a New Fighter After Extended Layoff

Danger Dobson 2.0#UFC241 pic.twitter.com/aIlOiy1l2i

— Danger Dobson (@shana_dobson) August 15, 2019

The ordering process for Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-views has changed: UFC 241 is only available on ESPN+ in the U.S.

Team Lloyd Irvin veteran Shana Dobson returns to the Octagon this weekend for the first time since April 2018.

At UFC 241, Dobson will take on young contender Sabina Mazo in the first fight of the evening. Despite the long layoff, coming off a loss, and returning to face one of the best prospects in the division, Dobson is preparing for this fight like any other.

"There's pressure every time I fight especially since I don't have as much fighting experience as everyone else," Dobson told Sherdog.com. "I'm still growing and developing on the biggest stage possible so there's a lot of pressure every fight. But, I go into it like any other fight. We prepare and over-prepare in camp. The pressure is put on me in the gym so when we get to the cage I can execute."

Dobson's opponent Mazo is just 22, and already one of the most promising prospects in the division. Despite that, Dobson doesn't care about the hype surrounding her opponent, and believes she has the skills to neutralize what her opponent brings to the cage.

"We've studied her fights and my teammate fought on the same card as her last fight so I knew a bit about her. She's got good Muay Thai, good kicks, good ground work from the bottom but nothing that we are not prepared for. I'm going to get in there and nullify all that and make her fight."

Dobson spent some time on "The Ultimate Fighter" Season 26 to kick off the new women's flyweight division where the winner became the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship flyweight champion. Dobson didn't make it to the finals, but she learned a lot from her experience in the TUF house and still misses it to this day.

"These days I miss it because we used to be able to order groceries twice a day and they would deliver whatever we wanted. So sometimes I really miss not having to go to the grocery store," Dobson said with a laugh. "It was nice to be among other fighters and other likeminded girls with the same goals. It's a male-dominated sport so a lot of times I'm on the floor and I'm one of the only girls. It was also cool to see the different personalities and the diversity of everybody like some of the girls were super girly and some weren't."

Compared to other seasons of TUF, Season 26 was a bit of an anomaly. Not only did it start a new division and crown a champion, but a lot of the participants are still friends and train together to this day.

"I still talk to a lot of the girls. I trained with Montana De La Rosa before 'The Ultimate Fighter' and I trained with her in my camp for the Ariel Beck fight," Dobson said. "Me, Gillian Robertson and Rachel Ostovich still talk, we will send each other memes and stuff like that. All of us stay in good contact even the ones that have fought each other. It's like a bond because we started that division it's like a whole TUF club. I talk to some of the guys from other seasons and it doesn't seem to be like that for them."

Like anything in life, fighting is all about balance. In a sport as mentally and physically draining as MMA, fighters need activities to do outside of the gym to keep them humble and for Dobson, that's teaching.

"I'm homeschooling now so it's more chill and laid back and allows me to train full-time, which is awesome. It's a little different, I'm used to a bigger group of kids and different expectations. I feel a lot closer with the kids because I'm only working with a few of them," Dobson explained. "I think it's healthy for people to have a life outside of fighting. It's good at times to have that space in your life to separate yourself and that's what teaching is for me. It also teaches me patience for the fights and anybody that works with kids knows you need patience."

This will be Dobson's third fight inside the Octagon but her first on a pay-per-view. A lot of fighters would see this as added pressure but Dobson is excited to finally show what she’s been working on for over a year.

"It's really exciting, but the only thing that's not is normally I can request extra tickets for my friends and family, but since this card is so lit they don't have any extra! I was so excited when I saw I was on the DC vs. Stipe card, it's just awesome. Then I texted my boy Sodiq Yusuff and told him to try to get on that card and a couple of weeks later he texted me and just said 'guess what?' So I'm excited to go out there with my teammate. It's just extra support."

When asked what she had been working on the past year, Dobson was rightfully secretive but excited to get in the cage and finally show the fans her improved skills.

"I don't want to give it away! But expect to see a year's worth of growth. You're going to be surprised to see how much my style has developed and how much I've grown. Everything is off of instinct now and I've just developed so much in the last year."