Elena Tverdokhleb – WOMEN BOXING ARCHIVE NETWORK

Update as of 2024:

ELENA TVERDOKHLEB… A Former world kickboxing champion, Elena became the first female professional female boxer from Ukraine. A Lawyer by profession, she fought Myriam Lamare of France twice for the WBA world titles and lost by close decisions. Together with her late husband Igor they did much to manage martial arts and amateur boxing in eastern Europe. Her daughter is a national standard water-polo player in Ukraine.

5’6″ Junior welterweight Elena Tverdokhleb, 38 years old as of 2009, fights out of Kiev, Ukraine.

She is a practicing lawyer and she has a master degree in law, graduating in 1998 from the faculty of law in the National Shevchenko University. For over 10 years Elena has bee the head of a legal department of the big joint-stock and holding companies.

Elena told WBAN about her early childhood. She said, “In my childhood, I was a habitual ringleader and a participant of all-out fights. I was fighting desperately and had no fear of getting a broken nose and/or teeth. Everybody thinks that my nose was broken in the ring, but actually it is a trace of my pugnacious childhood.”

“And as long as can remember, I always did sports: from games to track-and-field athletics and from athletics to Judo in which I’d been the champion of Kyiv, a prize – winner of Ukraine Championship and some international tournaments”, added Elena.

In 1991, Elena began kickboxing in the 1990’s. In 1993, she won her first silver medal at X World Championship in Greece (WAKO), then she received a bronze medal at IÕ World Championship in Budapest (WAKO).

In 1993, and1995, Elena became the champion of the world at X World Championship in Kiev (WAKO) and the champion of Europe among professionals of WAKO.

In 1997 in Milan, she became the champion of the world according to prestige American version ISKA.

Elena said, “following several years of making my legal carrier, and giving birth to my son, I came back to sports and starting 2003 began training and competing in professional boxing. Yet in April 2005, in Marseille, I fought for the WBA Boxing World Champion. In 2007-2008, I stop my training and giving birth to my daughter. From April 2009, I came back to boxing gym and now I am preparing for new fights. When my friends form Europe and America wonder how can I, a practicing lawyer, be professionally into boxing, I always laugh off that: professionally I am into jurisprudence, and boxing just helps to persuade opponents… But to be serious, I never faced and I will never face such a choice – I can do both and even more. It is ten years since I have been heading the legal departments of the biggest companies.”

Elena never thought of boxing as a job – she would then lose joy of treating boxing as an exciting hobby… And when Vitaliy Klichko had repeatedly expressed opinion that boxing is not for women, Elena retorted, “I would say that boxing is not for all men either… “.

“If speaking about moments when it is needed to put a cad (boor) in his place, I can prove my words not only with oral evidence, which is sometimes inefficient, but also with fists. It is better then to gulp back offences. Kindness and good manners must be with fists in the direct meaning of it, otherwise cads will wipe their feet on them”, added Elena.