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\n Cecilia Br\u00e6khus embarked on her against-the-odds career in professional boxing<\/a> almost two decades ago, and she\u2019s hardly stopped fighting before or since.\n <\/p>\n \n Along the way, her opponents have been many and varied, from world champions in the ring to a professional boxing ban in her native country and those who believed that women had no place in the sport at all.\n <\/p>\n \n Now, at the age of 43, Br\u00e6khus is ready to hang up her gloves, her far-reaching legacy already etched into boxing\u2019s history books as the first-ever undisputed women\u2019s world champion.\n <\/p>\n \n But to have experienced such success during your career only makes it harder to say goodbye. Ahead of her final fight against Slovenian Ema Kozin on Saturday, Br\u00e6khus has been coming to terms with the pain and finality of her retirement from boxing.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis has kind of like been my whole life, and I love it,\u201d she tells CNN Sports<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be very sad; it\u2019s going to be hard; it\u2019s going to be like a heartbreak.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Boxing is no stranger to underdog tales, to seeing fighters rise from obscurity and hardship to reach the very top of the sport. But no champion in history has had a journey quite like Br\u00e6khus.\n <\/p>\n \n Born in Colombia and orphaned from a young age, she was brought up in her adopted home of Norway \u2013 a country with an historic aversion to pugilism.\n <\/p>\n \n Professional boxing had been illegal since 1981, yet that didn\u2019t stop Br\u00e6khus from falling in love with combat sports. As a teenager, she would sneak out of her parents\u2019 home to practice kickboxing at a local gym before stepping into the ranks of amateur boxing.\n <\/p>\n \n At the time, most female fighters had little-to-no footprint in the sport, which was geared overwhelmingly towards men. This, coupled with a professional ban in her home country, meant that a boxing career seemed almost unthinkable for someone like Br\u00e6khus, even after becoming European champion and a world silver medalist. But she remained undeterred.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis was before girls could go to the Olympics (for boxing),\u201d Br\u00e6khus explains about the start of her professional career. \u201cThis was before the #MeToo movement. And this was when there were still boxing gyms that didn\u2019t allow women.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI was literally told, \u2018Hey, women are not allowed in the gym,\u2019 and there were male coaches that didn\u2019t want to train women. That was the kind of environment. I said I was going to be a boxing star, a boxing champion and world champion. I did get a lot of sh*t for that, and that kind of drove me.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Unable to pursue a professional career in Norway, Br\u00e6khus instead moved to Germany. There, she earned the nickname of \u201cFirst Lady\u201d as the first female fighter to sign with German promotor Wilfried Sauerland, sowing the seeds for her long and impressive career.\n <\/p>\n \n The high point came in September 2014, when Br\u00e6khus defeated Croatian Ivana Habazin to add the IBF welterweight title to her WBA, WBC, and WBO belts \u2013 becoming the first woman in any weight division to be recognized as an undisputed champion.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to find a unified champion, male or female, that doesn\u2019t have an influence on a whole generation,\u201d Br\u00e6khus\u2019 long-time trainer, Johnathon Banks, tells CNN Sports.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cBut she had such a big influence, because once all these girls found out \u2026 they don\u2019t want to just be world champions, they want to be undisputed; it means more, it sounds better. And it all came from this little girl fighting out of Norway.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Around the same time, Br\u00e6khus had been waging a separate battle back home. In between her training in Germany, she would fly back to Norway to speak with doctors, health specialists, politicians, and even the prime minister in an attempt to get the professional ban overturned.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere was a very, very big stigma (around boxing), and you\u2019re also a criminal in Norway, so it was very hard to get sponsorship, it was hard to get recognition,\u201d says Br\u00e6khus.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAnd when you\u2019re doing this sport, we actually could go to jail if you were to do that in Norway, so I just wanted to take away that stigma. And I wanted to introduce the sport to Norwegians.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In December 2014, Br\u00e6khus\u2019 efforts paid off. The Norwegian parliament voted to lift its ban on professional boxing, which had been punishable with up to three months in jail, by a slim majority of 54 to 48. The moment felt unlike any other victory in Br\u00e6khus\u2019 career.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen you\u2019re a world champion, that\u2019s just me, me, me, me. I\u2019m world champion, I\u2019m the best \u2013 ego, ego,\u201d she says. \u201cOther stuff, like taking down the ban, this is something that will have an enormous impact for a lot of people and for many, many years to come.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The lifting of the ban in Norway is just one sweeping change that Br\u00e6khus has witnessed in her long career.\n <\/p>\n \n In 2012, she saw women boxers compete at the Olympics for the first time, then in 2018 took part in the first female boxing match to air on HBO in the network\u2019s 45-year history, defeating American Kali Reis by unanimous decision.\n <\/p>\n \n That resulted in Br\u00e6khus defending her undisputed title, just one stop in her record-breaking reign of five years and 337 days as a four-belt champion. It was only in 2020 that her streak of 25 title defenses \u2013 matching former heavyweight champion Joe Louis\u2019 record \u2013 came to a surprising end against Jessica McCaskill.\n <\/p>\n \n Br\u00e6khus has been flirting with retirement ever since her first loss to McCaskill, but now, finally, feels ready to step away. She leaves women\u2019s boxing in far better health than when she started, and is heartened that \u201cgirls \u2013 seven, eight years old \u2013 are empowered to start doing boxing training.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But more progress, Br\u00e6khus believes, still needs to be made. By way of example, she points to an incident at a recent press conference in Norway when a journalist asked her if she was a lesbian.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cYou have to understand that there are still things that women athletes have to deal with that a male athlete never will have to deal with \u2013 ever,\u201d says Br\u00e6khus. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t even like cross their minds \u2026 I feel like we have to be twice, thrice as good as the men to get the same recognition, to get the same pay, to get the same opportunities.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Her parting message to the powers-that-be in boxing is to \u201cinvest in girls \u2013 because we\u2019ve proven over and over again that we sell tickets, we entertain, we\u2019re drawing crowds.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano<\/a> have been at the forefront of this surging popularity, becoming the first two women to headline at Madison Square Garden in 2022 before facing off again as the co-main event to Mike Tyson and Jake Paul<\/a> last year.\n <\/p>\n \n Br\u00e6khus has also seen her share of sellout stadiums, most famously when a crowd of 10,000 in Oslo watched her defeat Anne Sophie Mathis in her first professional bout on Norwegian soil nine years ago.\n <\/p>\n \n Another packed-out crowd is expected for the final fight of her career against Kozin in Lillestr\u00f8m on Saturday, with Br\u00e6khus holding few, if any, regrets as she walks into the ring one last time.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI think it\u2019s just time,\u201d says Br\u00e6khus. \u201cI want to stop at the top. I don\u2019t want to go out with any injuries. I don\u2019t want to look back and say, \u2018Hey, you shouldn\u2019t have done that last fight, both physically and mentally.\u2019\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe worst thing, I think, is when the lights turn off and you suddenly don\u2019t have anything to do,\u201d she adds. \u201cSo I\u2019m going to stay very active outside of boxing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n At first, Br\u00e6khus wants to distance herself from the sport \u2013 \u201clike when you have broken up in a relationship, stay away a little bit and then become friends,\u201d she explains \u2013 and intends to focus on writing, speaking engagements, TV appearances and charity work.\n <\/p>\n \n She anticipates traveling for work but wants her base to be in Norway. It seems fitting that she will end her career by fighting in her adopted home, more than a decade after she was so instrumental in professional boxing\u2019s legalization in the country. In front of a home crowd, the \u201cFirst Lady\u201d is awaiting her final bell.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cShe was able to fight and get something better for herself in boxing, which to me is beautiful,\u201d says Banks. \u201cAlthough she had to go next door to Germany to get it, she came back and brought it back home.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThat\u2019s her biggest win. Her biggest win is she brought it back home.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Cecilia Br\u00e6khus embarked on her against-the-odds career in professional boxing almost two decades ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-177596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cecilia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/gettyimages-955146884.jpg\")
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