By Thomas Gerbasi

It’s almost impossible to believe that until December of 2014, Cecilia Braekhus was viewed as a criminal in her home country of Norway. No, she was not a fugitive forced to escape home and live in exile. But the undisputed welterweight champion and pound-for-pound queen was forced to leave in order to ply her trade as a professional boxer.

Yet once she established herself as one of her sport’s best and had a platform to have her voice heard, she began her biggest fight – to get the ban on professional boxing in Norway lifted. And like each of her 28 pro bouts, she emerged victorious, but it wasn’t easy.

“It was a vote, and it was a very, very close vote and it could have gone either way,” Braekhus said of the 2014 vote, which was only 54-48 in favor of lifting the ban. “So we were so excited. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything. I knew that if we would have lost this vote, then it would have taken 20 more years for a new vote. So when that happened, I could not describe it. I was so happy. We had worked for this seven years and I was so happy for me, for my team, for the whole boxing community.”

The official celebration for Braekhus and the boxers of Norway takes place this Saturday, when she faces Anne Sophie Mathis at The Spectrum in Oslo. And while to most this is just another title fight on another weekend, it’s so much more for the “First Lady,” who won’t forget what it took to get here.

“I was a criminal in Norway,” she said. “If I was boxing in Norway, I would get fined or put in jail, and not only me, but all the other fighters and boxers in Norway. We were treated very bad, and I was not taking that. We have done nothing wrong, we just wanted to do our sport, and we are good people. So this was definitely not okay. The picture that was made from media and from others about boxers, it was horrible. We are just normal people.”

As bizarre as this whole situation might sound, it’s even more bizarre when you look at who Braekhus is. Born in Colombia and adopted by Norwegian parents when she was two years old, Braekhus not only became a world-class boxer and undisputed champion, but a graceful ambassador for the sport. In other words, she was the type of role model any country should have been proud to claim, but it wasn’t like that in Norway.

“In the beginning, the knowledge of boxing was so horrible and so bad,” she said. “I was once described as a violent criminal, and we were told that we did everything - we did doping, we did corruption. I'm serious, what did we not do? (Laughs) It was insane and we had to turn this around, and we did.”

The fact that she stuck with the fight and opened the doors for herself and her fellow fighters tells you everything you need to know about her, because frankly, she didn’t need to. Her legacy is set, she’s able to fight anywhere else in Europe, where she’s a superstar, and she could walk away whenever she wants to and be considered one of the best of all-time.

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“There were some times when I was thinking, ‘Okay, how much can I take?’ But the next day, I still had the will to fight because this was so unfair and it could not stand. And I knew that when I went away, if I didn't take the fight then it will probably not happen. So I just had to get the ball in the net. If not, it wouldn't happen.”

But now it has, and as happy as Braekhus is, her inner circle is just as ecstatic.

“They are so happy and so proud,” she said. “Just to get that win makes everybody around me - sponsors, friends, family, everybody - happy and proud. You don't have this person anymore who could get in jail for doing what they're doing. It's like being freed without doing anything wrong.”

There’s still a fight to be fought though, and while the 34-year-old already holds a 2012 win over the France native, who hasn’t fought since February of 2015, Mathis is still one of the hardest punchers in the game and a dangerous foe. Again, Braekhus didn’t have to do this, as no one would have blinked an eye if she took on a lesser opponent in her first fight in Norway. But that’s not who Braekhus is.

“I think that would be very unsatisfying,” she said. “If I did that, knocked a nobody out in the ring, I think I would stand and feel extremely unsatisfied. If I win on the first of October, it has to be against a worthy opponent. If not, everything has been for nothing.”

And while Braekhus would have loved to have been able to compete at home throughout her nearly ten-year career, she admits that she might not have been the same fighter if she didn’t have to leave home to get great.

“I love boxing and I would do anything to be better in it, but this fight has made me very tough and made me another person from the one that left Norway,” she said. “I am definitely another person today than the one that left Norway as a young girl to do her boxing.”

That person returns home this weekend as a champion and hero. But there will be no celebration until after the final bell sounds.

“I just need to be one hundred percent professional and try to walk in as if it's any other fight where I see only myself and my opponent in the ring because everything else doesn't matter,” Braekhus said. “If not, then this fairy tale can get really ugly, because she's a tough girl.”