Olivia Bahsous Chose Her ONE Championship Debut Over Prom And Says She Would Do It Again
Most 16-year-olds in Canada were getting dressed for prom on the night Olivia Bahsous walked into Lumpinee Stadium. She was too busy finishing her opponent to notice.
Bahsous stopped Phontip Khlongtoeiyouthcenter via TKO in 89 seconds on her ONE Championship debut at The Inner Circle 19 at Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday, June 19. The three-time IFMA Gold Medalist had been invited to prom a month before the fight was confirmed. Once she got the call from ONE Championship, the decision made itself.
“I got invited to prom maybe a month before, and I didn’t know if my fight was confirmed yet. So I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go, of course.’ I was so excited, looking for dresses and everything,” she said.
“But then, Mr. Chatri [Sityodtong] told me that I’d be fighting, and I was even happier. I didn’t regret my decision to fight on the same day as prom. I did miss it, but I’m not very sad about it. I’ll go again.”
The 16-year-old Cookie Muay Thai and P’Chai Muay Thai representative carries a fighting career and a teenager’s life in parallel. The balancing act between the two is something she has been learning to manage with a maturity that surprises people who encounter it for the first time.
“He took it smoothly. He was just proud of me, and it’s fine. But yeah, the hardest thing to balance is probably my social life outside of social media. Because I’m homeschooled, I don’t have many friends,” she said.
“I go to church three times a week, so I have friends there. But the hardest thing is probably the social life. However, I wouldn’t change my journey for anything.”
The loneliness that comes with constant travel and full-time training is real, and Bahsous is open about it. A conversation with her parents a few days after the debut brought the feeling to the surface.
“Probably loneliness. I was just speaking to my parents about this a couple of days ago. I feel like I don’t have a lot of friends because of the amount of time I spend training and traveling around the world,” she said.
“I miss my family in Canada and my friends there. I also have friends in Thailand, but just one or two of them. It’s lonely sometimes because I spend so much time in the gym.”
Her father Tanios gave her the nickname “Diamond” after watching her respond to pressure with something that looked a lot like brightness. He put it plainly.
“My dad gave me this nickname. He noticed that whenever there was pressure around me – before a fight, in training, or anything in life – I always shined brighter because pressure makes diamonds,” she said.
“He said pressure made me. That’s why I have my name. Also, diamonds are unbeatable; they’re the strongest rock.”
READ MORE: Max Holloway Fires Back at Conor McGregor’s Trash Talk Before UFC 329
Recent posts
