Cecilie Bolander has been on the mats since she was quite young. She started with judo in her home country of Norway and eventually made it up to medaling at the European championships. Through that journey, she always knew that competition was going to be an outlet for her – even if she didn’t always know it would be in a cage.
“I’ve always known, like when I did judo before, I always knew I was supposed to do something within sports,” Bolander said. “And I know I can’t do it later, when I’m 70.”
And it took her some time to realize that MMA was the right sport for her. However, after discovering her love for the sport, she dove in completly. That isn’t just to say in the competition of it all, but all the facets of the sport – from the marketing and social media to the training itself. She was all in.
“I didn’t know it was going to be MMA at the end of the day. I think it could have been anything. I knew that if I were to go into MMA, I told myself that I’ll do it 100%, I’ll do the commercial part, I’ll do everything as well as I can do it,” she explained. “But with my values and the things that I stand for and what I believe to be important in my life.”
A big part of that commitment to MMA is what it does for her on a personal level. While she doesn’t comsider herself a particularly brave person in everyday life, from her first moments in MMA, she recognized it as a place that allowed her to stand up for herself. That feeling is the single most important part of the sport to her.
“It just happened. I don’t really know. To be honest, personally, I’m probably scared of everything that I can be scared of,” Bolander said. “In everyday life, I’m probably scared of everything. But when the time comes and I really need to stick up for myself, or I end up in a situation where I need to fight for my life, then I’m not scared of anything anymore.”
Being able to let go of that scared side is a huge weight off of her shoulders. So while some see what she does as violent and chaotic, it’s almost anything but that for her.
“I guess that fighting for me is that one chance I get to be completely free and not think about anything,” she explains. “It’s brutal in a way – like I don’t think about fighting in a brutal way – but it’s so put on edge. And once that door closes either you’re getting the beating or you’re the one who beats the other person up.”
Bolander’s next chance at that kind of freedom is her Oktagon bantamweight title fight this Sunday against Lucie Pudilova. You can catch that rematch with Pudilova this Sunday. The card begins at noon EST and airs on oktagon.tv pay-per-view.
You can hear the entire audio of this interview below as part of the Top Turtle MMA Podcast. The interview airs at 39:38.
