Norwegian boxing star Cecilia Brækhus was recovering this week after what turned out to be rather nasty but victorious bout in Bergen, her first in her hometown. She’s not sure she’ll box back home again, though.
“I really want to box in Bergen again,” she told reporters after beating Erica Farias of Argentina outdoors at the outdoor venue Koengen last weekend. “But we have challenges finding halls, and boxing outdoors is nerve-wracking. I don’t know whether I can do it again.”
She was referring mostly to how nervous she was about the weather, which often involves pouring rain in Bergen, instead of the job of defending her World Champion title, at which she succeeded.
“I should have had full focus on going into the ring, but then there’s that other part of you that’s arranging the event,” said the now-35-year-old Brækhus. “When you hear the rain pouring down outside, you think, ‘oh, helvete (hell). And when it clears up (which it did) and the whole night is a huge success, it’s hard to land again afterwards.”
So she was up all night after the match late Friday and heading into Saturday. She claimed she hadn’t slept a second after beating Farias and then breaking into tears of joy.
“It was tougher than I thought it would be,” she said. “Farias quickly realized she couldn’t out-box me, and then it got a bit ugly. She charged at me head-first, and should have had some warnings about that.”
Brækhus claimed she never got started “with my boxing, and then there was less boxing than I wanted. But that’s the way it is, with two world champions with two different styles. Sometimes it gets ugly.”
When it was all over, Brækhus said her adrenalin was pumping so hard, and she had so many thoughts in her head, that it was impossible to sleep. “There was a lot to deal with,” she said.
She used some of the sleepless night just to review video from the match, dubbed the Battle of Bergen. She admitted it perhaps wasn’t as entertaining for the roughly 7,500 boxing fans who’d turned out to see her box at home in a country where boxing was banned until just three years ago. Now Brækhus is already looking ahead to the next match, wherever it may be held.
newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund
