Biography
She states on a female bodybuilding site that "as a teenager I was always interested in sports and strength events", taking part in basketball, field hockey and soccer, among others. At the age of 17, she found inspiration in the female bodybuilder Nikki Fuller - "I thought and still think that that's the way a female is meant to look". She has worked with weights extensively since then, lifting 4 times a week.
She began her martial arts training after a friend introduced her to wrestling. Having competed in that sport, she later took up brazilian jiu-jitsu; she has been trained by 4th degree black belt Marcus Vinicius at the Beverly Hills Jiu Jitsu Club since February 1999. Bakalopoulos then moved into MMA during the year 2000 (she states in an ADCC interview that she started in 1998, but this may refer to her wrestling). When asked by Thomas Gerbasi about women in combat sport, Bakalopoulos replied:
"In every other sport you see women having a place. Women have as much right to be in this as the guys do. In the beginning, it wasn't all that great but now you have women like Lucia Rijker and Laila Ali, they're just phenomenal fighters. Every year the sport gets bigger, more women get into it, and they're saying 'hey, I can do this.' It's going to be awesome."She counts Bas Rutten and Marco Ruas amongst her former trainers.
Olga had lots of fans all around the world. Olga was one of the best wrestling and MMA instructors in the world and transmitted her knowledge on several tours around the world. In 2005, Olga retired as a professional MMA fighter and no longer gave private MMA and wrestling lectures.
Read more about this topic: Olga Bakalopoulos
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