It is a considerable achievement to fight even once as a professional boxer. To turn out repeatedly, make a successful career of pugilism and to do so while keeping one’s faculties apparently intact, is rare and laudable. To become good enough to call yourself a world champion, let alone a four-belt undisputed champion, places one in rarefied company indeed.
Imagine now achieving all the above while hailing from a nation where professional boxing is actually illegal, where throwing a punch in a prize fight could land you in jail.
That, though, has been the life and career of Cecilia Braekhus, who turned professional in 2007 – when women’s boxing was more than a novelty but far short of the relatively mainstream success story it has become – won her first world title two years later and became undisputed welterweight champion with a decision win over Ivana Habazin in September 2014.
It has been a long and successful journey, but its end is in sight. Aged 41, with a record of 38-2-1 (9 KOs), and now wearing a junior middleweight belt, she is bowing out on October 4 with a final fight, against fellow beltholder Ema Kozin, and then she will be finished.
“It's a lot of feelings,” Braekhus said by way of describing her emotions in a Zoom call with BoxingScene from London, where she is training one last time with Johnathon Banks. “I love this sport, but it's time for me to go. I'm going to end my career on a high with all the belts and I want to experience a life outside of boxing too.”
It all began 27 years ago, when a young Braekhus – born in Colombia, but adopted at age two and transplanted to Norway – first tried martial arts and immediately fell in love with the whole concept of combat sports.
From there she tried kickboxing and then boxing, her parents expressing concern and telling her she couldn’t do either before ultimately relenting.
Although professional boxing had been outlawed in Norway in 1981, amateur boxing was relatively widespread and well regulated; even so, a teenage girl showing up to the gym to spar was not something to which anyone was accustomed, and she faced a tough baptism.
“The first time I went to the gym, I felt like this was something that I can get really, really good at, and I think my coaches also saw that,” she recalled. “They took me in and I got to train with all the guys. I got my ass beat in sparring. I was 15, 16 years old. I was sparring with these huge guys, and they were just like punching me in the face. But I was like, ‘I love this! I want to do this!’”
In a country where professional pugilism was considered too dangerous to exist, one might reasonably expect grown men to have second thoughts about punching a teenage girl or to at least go easy on her, but Braekhus recalls her suspicions that they had motivation not to treat her differently.
“I don’t think so, because a lot of them didn’t want a girl there,” she laughs. “They figured ‘If we beat the shit out of her, she’ll go away.’ That definitely didn’t happen.”
She fought a handful of amateur bouts, losing her first couple and ultimately compiling an unremarkable 9-4 record before deciding the pro game was more to her liking.
She made her pro debut on a Sauerland card in Basel, Switzerland, winning a four-round decision over Ksenija Koprek on January 20, 2007. “ It was almost like an old warehouse, a little bit shady,” she recalled.
She followed that up with a KO2 in Belgium and then, after signing with Sauerland Promotions, began a string of contests in Germany – where, thanks to the likes of Regina Halmich and Suzi Kentikian, women’s boxing enjoyed a popularity it could only dream of elsewhere.
She then had a spell between 2009 and 2016 when the bulk of her outings were as close to Norway as it was possible to be without actually being in Norway: in Finland and, primarily, Denmark – including a three-round thumping of a completely overmatched Mia St John and wins over legitimately dangerous contenders like Chevelle Hallback and Anne-Sophie Mathis.
Her 2012 decision win over Mathis – who, two fights previously, had viciously knocked out Holly Holm – was in the Danish town of Frederikshavn; four years later, they met again, and this time Braekhus knocked out her opponent in the second round, a barrage of right hands leaving the Frenchwoman folded over the top rope.
Braekhus and her team celebrated wildly in the ring and with good reason: not only because she had scored a statement win over a dangerous foe but because the victory marked a homecoming. For the first time, she had fought as a professional in Norway.
“After I became world champion, I became, you know, a darling in Norway,” she explained. “I collected all the belts, and Norwegians started to travel outside of Norway to come watch my fights. And in the end, they pretty much demanded that Norway got rid of the ban so I could fight in my own country.”
When the Norwegian government, largely responding to Braekhus’ popularity, ended the ban in Decenber 2014, Braekhus was quoted as saying that, “Now at least I can say that I’m no longer a criminal in Norway. I feel vindicated and cleared.”
Shortly after securing the right to box in Norway, however, her career ‘s focus shifted to the United States.
In May 2018, she defended her titles against Kali Reis at what was then the StubHub Center in Carson, California in the very first women’s bout to be televised on HBO; seven months later she was the last person of any gender to win a fight on a HBO boxing broadcast, when she closed out the cable giant’s 45-year involvement in the sport with a win over Aleksandra Lopes.
“That fight against Kali Reis was amazing,” she enthused. “We had like a million views. The whole audience was standing on their feet and remember, I picked Kali Reis. I picked her; the HBO people didn’t want her. They didn’t know who she was. [Somewhat ironically, given that Reis has since become something of a star on that network.] I said, ‘No, it has to be her. Trust me, it has to be her.’”
Since then, her career has slowly wound down. A win over Victoria Bustos in her sole outing of 2019 was followed by a pair of defeats to Jessica McCaskill, leaving her without a world title for the first time in 11 years. She fought once a year in 2022 and 2023 and picked up an interim WBC 154 pound belt in August 2024.
Now the story reaches its denouement against WBC and WBO champion Kozin – fittingly, at home in Norway.
There are few gimmes in boxing, including in career finales (ask Miguel Cotto or Bernard Hopkins, among others), but when it is put to Braekhus that she could have picked a far easier final foe than Kozin, 24-1-1 (12 KOs), and that nobody would have minded one bit, she immediately pushes back.
“Well, everybody else may have been okay with that, but I would not have been okay with that,” she said. “I mean, with the kind of career I have had, it has to match everything that I have been doing before. You know, first on HBO. One million viewers on HBO. Took down the professional ban in Norway, undisputed champion. I mean, the end has to match the career, and Ema Kozin was the one who was sitting on the belts. So be it. Then it’s Ema Kozin.”
Of course, for every boxer who retires it seems there is another who is coming out of retirement. From Joe Louis to Mike Tyson, the history of the sport is riddled with examples of those who felt lost without the structure and adulation that boxing brought and gloved up again, with predominantly bad results.
While Braekhus is adamant that she is retiring at the right time, there is a clear reluctance to her decision. She is also acutely aware of the challenges she will immediately face when the final bell rings.
“There’s definitely gonna be a small identity crisis first,” she admitted. “It’s important to have a plan when you step out of the ring for the last time. Because it’s going to be hard, you know, the limelight is going to be gone. The phone is not going to ring as much as it did. It’s incredibly important to deal with the heartbreak and to just stay busy. I’m going to have my calendar full from morning to evening every day until this heartbreak ends.”
It is equally clear that she will both miss the grind and be happy to be free from it, but she hopes that the results were such that fans will look back on her career favorably and with fondness.
“I have spent so much time in the gym, repeating, repeating, repeating, waking up at 6AM to go running in the snow, making weight, eating well, just the discipline - my God! - to be able to be the best fighter, the best version of myself, that I can ever be,” she reflected. “I just want people to say, ‘She was an amazing fighter. We loved to watch her fights.’”
