Sheppard sets her sights on World kickboxing title in front of local fans

Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon

INSTEAD of packing lunches as her children return to school in the coming days, Galway mother-of-two Whitney Sheppard will look to be packing punches when she fights German champion Evelyn Gallegos for the vacant IKF Atomweight World K-1 title in the Clayton Hotel on Saturday.

While Sheppard (31) acknowledges this is the biggest fight of her career – it is the headline event at the ‘Clash in the Clayton’ – the occasion has been heightened with her 11-year-old daughter Sofia fighting on the undercard earlier in the evening.

Indeed, what hurling is to the Canning household, kickboxing is the same in the Sheppard home. For her husband Peter is also a champion fighter and World Organisation of Martial Arts Athletes (WOMAA) World Games medal winner while her other daughter, four-year-old Taylor, is part of the Little Dragons initiative.

“It is great,” says Sheppard of having the whole family involved in the sport. “Sofia is telling me now she is getting nervous and I am like ‘I know, I am nervous too with the two of us fighting on the one show’. Peter was also meant to fight but he didn’t get a match. I think he is fighting in December now, so it is fine.”

As for Sheppard herself, she admits she does have a few butterflies heading into Saturday’s showpiece. “Yes, I am very nervous,” she laughs. “I love fighting. I fought 36 times so far – and enjoyed it – so it is not about that. It is just such a big fight but it is lovely to be in Galway and to have all my family and friends there. It is nice to have the support.”

Given Sheppard, who is a sister of hugely successful martial arts exponent Paul Huish, has been fighting competitively since the age of 15, she has plenty of experience she can draw on when she meets the teak-tough German.

“The girl I am fighting is Evelyn Gallegos and she’s very good. She has had more fights than me and she just won a big tournament over in England. She fights kickboxing, boxing and K-1. She is all round very good.

“I have seen her on YouTube and on Facebook and that kind of thing. She won’t stop. I know I have to be very fit for this fight because she is all go. That is pretty much all I know about her other than she is here to fight. As her coach said to Pete (Foley, promoter), they are not coming for a holiday. So, she means business.”

For her part, Sheppard began her career at the age of 14 when she saw a poster in a shop advertising a show and classes for Foley’s Black Dragon gym. “I rang from a pay phone – that is how long ago it was – and I started the next week,” she recalls.

“I didn’t want to go on my own so I brought my brother Paul with me. He came for the first class, didn’t really like it and left for a couple of months and then came back and became world champion before me! So, that is how I started.”

She had played a little hockey in school but, for Sheppard, this was something she really loved – and “was good at from the start”.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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