STOCKHOLM: Since trading ballet shoes for boxing gloves a decade ago, Lucy Wildheart has never looked back, and the 29-year-old now aspires to defeat Amanda Serrano on her way to the world title.
Whatever her formidable punching power, the Swedish boxer with a professional record of eight wins and one loss has fantastic footwork thanks to her dancing skills.
“It’s all about the legs and feet — if you can move your feet, you can’t get hit,” Wildheart told Reuters ahead of her September 17 fight with Eva Cantos at Civic Hall in Greys, some 20 miles (32 km ). ) east of central London.
“It’s all about footwork and leg power, and I get a lot of that from dancing,” she added.
In her late teens, Wildheart was an enthusiastic member of a huge Swedish dance scene where young and old gather to dance in pairs, with the ‘bugg’ (an early Swedish variant of lindy hop) and the foxtrot being particularly popular.
Wildheart discovered boxing while working as a personal trainer, and once she began studying dance full-time, she quickly found that her two passions heavily overlapped.
“I knew it would help my boxing, improve my footwork and balance. I applied to a dance class and was accepted, the first year it was about 30 hours of active dancing per week – ballet, contemporary dance and jazz,” she said.
Wildheart was accepted into the Swedish Ballet Academy but believed her future was in the ring.
“I decided to move to England because it gave me the opportunity to focus more on boxing and have a little more choice in what I wanted to do. Since then, I’ve really only danced at home,” she said.
STRONG & EXPLOSIVE
“To be really good at boxing you have to be good at a lot of things. Coordination, strategy, fitness, you have to be strong and explosive, and those are the things that interest me, the science behind it,” Wildherz said.
Although she loves being a professional boxer, she still longs for her evenings on the dance floor.
“There’s something about dancing, it’s hard for me to talk about it, hard for me to see it — I almost get sad because I wish I could do more of it,” she said.
When asked to describe her boxing style, Wildheart bounces back.
“I can box front foot or back foot depending on who I’m hitting, but also angles – angles are probably my forte. That comes from dancing – I can score from any angle,” she said.
With women’s boxing gaining popularity, Wildheart is looking to climb the world featherweight list and take on WBC, WBO and IBO world title holder Serrano from Puerto Ricans.
“I want to get first or second in all the rankings and then hope to get the offer (of a title fight),” Wildheart said.
“It’s fun to be in the mix, to be among those that young girls look up to … but also to meet the best — you know you’re the best when you’ve beaten good people,” she added .