Smilla Sundell did not wish to struggle. Now she is a world champion.
The 19-year-old at the moment reigns as ONE Ladies’s Strawweight Muay Thai world champion and is about to defend her title towards Natalya Dyachkova at ONE Battle Night time 22 in Bangkok, Thailand within the early hours of Saturday Might 4, stay on Sky Sports activities.
Sundell’s emphatic rise has seen her grow to be the WBC’s top-ranked girls’s Muay Thai competitor on the age of 16, earlier than changing into ONE’s youngest Muay Thai world champion aged 17.
Baddest teenager on the planet? Fairly probably.
“I think it’s fun to hear that,” laughed Sundell, talking to Sky Sports activities. “I heard different kinds like that. I think I still have a lot to grow on.”
Sundell grew up in Sweden and started studying karate on the age of 5 earlier than being launched to Muay Thai whereas on vacation in Thailand, the place she would ultimately transfer because of her mother and father’ jobs. The remainder was gold customary historical past, with the very best little question nonetheless to return.
“I moved to Thailand when I was 11-12 years old, and I’ve always been into sports and stuff and when we moved to the small island in Thailand there was not many sports to do and only Muay Thai,” she defined. “So I began off coaching for enjoyable with my household and in a while the trainers and my mother and father thought that I used to be adequate to struggle.
“But I didn’t really want to do it so. One day they told me like the evening before that I had a fight the next day, and that’s how it started. I didn’t want to do it. I was very angry and p***** off at everyone because I didn’t want to get hurt.
“It was not for me. It took me three fights to essentially get into it. It was similar for the primary three fights. They informed me like someday earlier than. However I like successful and I gained my first three fights, I just like the successful feeling, so I saved going and now I am a world champion.”
Natalia Diachkova., ONE Championship
Sundell jokes that she has grow to be considerably accustomed to the common dose of ache. Profitable in commanding trend, as she so usually has, helps restrict as a lot.
She made her Muay Thai debut again in 2018, prevailing with a first-round stoppage in a contest that will have by no means taken place.
“I was actually planning on cancelling my first fight, because I really didn’t want to get hurt,” she continued. “But then I got to the next day, I was like ‘she’s a small girl too’ and if the trainers tells me I’m good I have to trust them.
“I see the woman on the stadium. ‘I am like, ah, she’s small too’, and we agreed to not do elbows, in order that was good. However I used to be like ‘oh she appears nervous, too, let’s simply get it performed after which not should do it once more’.”
Sundell was left with a decision to make at the age of 15 when her family decided to move back home to Sweden. She had found Muay Thai, and didn’t want to let it go.
“I do not suppose I might have been doing Muay Thai in Sweden and and in addition I might carry on finding out and be like anybody else,” she said. “Possibly work in a clothes store or a restaurant, so I am very completely satisfied I discovered Muay Thai.
“I just had started a Fairtex Gym and I know they have big opportunities here so I could choose to live my dream or go back to Sweden and just start like anyone else, and my family was very supportive of my choice and.
“We thought they’d come again even sooner to go to me however their flights had been cancelled on a regular basis so I did not see my mum for a year-and-a-half. They arrive to each struggle now.”
Teenager sensation Smilla Sundell will defend her world title on Sky Sports activities on Might 3
Sundell’s father, specifically, is as shut as anyone to The Hurricane’s blossoming profession, serving as considered one of his daughter’s cornermen.
“He’s very supportive and keeps pushing me, he knows that I can do it,” she says. “He just tells me to calm down, usually because I get too aggressive, I don’t focus in the first round, I get too many hits and he says ‘ok, calm down now’.”
Sundell made her ONE Championship debut in February 2022 as she beat Australia’s Diandra Martin by way of third-round TKO, earlier than clinching the Ladies’s Strawweight Muay Thai World Championship two months later with a unanimous choice victory over Jackie Buntan.
In doing so she grew to become the youngest fighter to win a world title, which she efficiently defended final September with a third-round stoppage win over Allycia Rodrigues having additionally made her kickboxing debut in Might 2023.
“I was surprised a bit that it happened so quickly, but I also kind of knew that I could do it. It was my biggest dream coming true,” she mentioned.
Together with her emergence has come the chance to cross paths with different greats of fight sport, together with WBC heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury, with whom Sundell lately grabbed an image whereas the Gypsy King was coaching in her fitness center.
“I took a photo with him before training, but I didn’t like that photo enough. I was like ‘no, I don’t look good on that one, so I let him train,” she laughed. “I did my own training, then I did some weights waiting for him to finish and then I got to take another picture with him.”
Smilla Sundell takes purpose at Allycia Hellen Rodrigues
Whereas she is relishing the prospect to work together with different sporting stars, she admits she is but to really feel like one herself.
“Nah, I don’t feel like a superstar,” she mentioned. “But then people come up to me and want a picture, so that’s kind of like a superstar, but in my eyes I’m just like a normal person.”
Regardless of being so early on in her personal profession, Sundell hopes to encourage different younger feminine fighters to comply with in her footsteps by pursuing success in fight sport.
“I think it’s very nice that people look up to me,” she mentioned. “Like people come to me training and they’re like, ‘Oh my god’ and they are star struck, and I can’t really believe it.
“That simply make me so completely satisfied. And I simply wish to carry on pushing extra and grow to be even higher.”
Having already taken a seat at the world champion table, Sundell isn’t ready to stop there.
Dyachkova awaits as the next stride towards dominance.
“I wish to be a world champion in all three classes, so kickboxing and MMA and Muay Thai, I wish to have all of the belts on the similar time,” she explained.
“However my first step can be to defend my belt from time to time get the kickboxing belt, after which MMA will come sooner or later.”
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