On Saturday, MMA fighter Jessica Eye will take on UFC women’s flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 238 for the flyweight title. She’s considered a massive underdog — a role she has experienced throughout her life — and has even stated, “This is for the real people that count themselves out, this is for the people that you call losers.”
Ahead of the match, Eye was also asked about recent news that the UFC and Aurora Cannabis will partner to study the effects CBD has on athletes, both in mental wellness and recovery. Eye admitted to using CBD before every fight and when she does, she notices “such a better person in the ring with less anxiety.
“I’m a huge advocate of marijuana and CBD. My dad died from brain cancer—GMB, which is a very aggressive form of brain cancer,” Eye said. “But it’s something that marijuana helps and CBD is known to help. I would love to be able to change the image around using CBD.
“I’m a highly anxious person,” she added. “Using CBD makes me less anxious and gives me better self-belief because I’m able to control that jitteriness I get before the fight.”
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The Aurora-UFC research on CBD will take place at the UFC’s Performance Institute in Las Vegas, Eye’s current resident city. The Performance Institute’s expert staff and any athletes that choose to do so will also participate in whatever studies that come out of the partnership’s research. Eye believes this research could be huge in changing stigmas around athletes using CBD and how the world views cannabinoids writ large.
“The more research we have the more the mass world believes. I know what I know because I research it and I spend the time doing it,” she said. “But let’s face it, the average world is not going to spend an hour to research something on their phone on something they don’t even know about it. Until they have a traumatic brain injury, then they’re going to realize—what outside Big Pharma can I do to help myself?”
You can watch her full interview below.
