UFC newcomer Anna ‘Panda’ Elmose is hoping to upset the odds on Sunday as she takes on the bigger, and more experienced, Germaine de Randamie at UFC Rotterdam.
Bloody Elbow caught up with the Scandinavian bantamweight and asked how it felt when she learned she would be competing on mixed-martial-arts’ grandest stage.
“I just started crying and kissing my husband, because I was so happy,” said Elmose.
“It just felt like when you’re a kid and you want that special thing, and it’s Christmas, and you almost gave up hope that you would get that thing.”
Elmose has won each of her three pro MMA fights by KO/TKO. When asked if she was surprised to receive a call by the UFC after just a trio of victories, Elmose was emphatic in her response, “Of course I was.”
“Of course I was,” repeated the Dane. “I haven’t been fighting since May last year and I was supposed to fight at Cage Warriors two weeks ago, so I was already in a camp and preparing myself for another fight and when my coach came and said to me the fight was off, I was like, ‘Ok that sucks’, ‘But, it’s only because you’re fighting in the UFC,’ I got quite surprised, because I actually thought that I needed to show a few more fights before they invited me to join the party.”
Though Elmose may be inexperienced in professional MMA the 31-year-old is a veteran of approximately thirty kickboxing, boxing, and Muay Thai fights.
“I started training when I turned twenty-five, and then I had my first full contact fight after three months,” said Elmose.
It was only three years ago that Elmose made the shift to MMA, in what she terms a “natural transition.”
“I started with the boxing and then I slowly added more into it,” said Elmose. “With the kicks, with the clinch, Muay Thai, and eventually - I’d been living in Thailand for a while - when I came back to Denmark, I changed my gym to an MMA gym, but not because I wanted to compete in MMA but because I thought Rumble Sports was the best gym to be training at.”
Copenhagen’s Rumble Sports has risen to become one of Scandinavia’s most reputable gyms and is home to a number of fighters known to UFC fans, such as Nicolas Dalby, Mats Nilsson, and Damir Hadzovic. The gym also houses top Invicta fighter, Pannie Kianzad.
“I actually wanted to just fight kickboxing for Rumble Sports,” remarked Elmose. “I think I’d been training [there] for two weeks or something like that, and I just fell in love with all the ground game as well, so it didn’t take them so long to convince me to fight MMA instead.”
It was at Rumble Sports, while training in MMA, that Elmose was able to unlock a power in her hands that was not there during her boxing and kickboxing days.
Elmose believes her past boxing trainers, who she still respects a great deal, had been training her without taking her body-type into consideration.
“I’m not very tall, and it’s not very smart to box like you’re very tall if you’re not,” said the 5’3″ Elmose, with a laugh.
“So, I haven’t been using my strengths before I came to Rumble Sports, after I got my new trainer, Tue Trnka, I learn how to use what is my genetic strength, so after I came to him, I started knocking people out.”
Despite being known as a striker, Elmose hopes to show UFC fans that she is more rounded than they might expect.
“I’m new in this game and I have a lot to learn, and I know that, but I don’t consider myself as a kickboxer. I consider myself as an MMA fighter.”
In Germaine de Randamie, Elmose meets a winner of five MMA fights, two of which have come inside the UFC. The Iron Lady’s last bout came at UFC 185 in March 2015. There she dismantled Larissa Pacheco on route to a crushing TKO victory. The 14th ranked UFC women’s bantamweight owns a long and storied Muay Thai record and her only losses in MMA have come to stiff opposition (Amanda Nunes, Julia Budd, and Vanessa Porto).
De Randamie is also half a foot taller than Elmose, but Elmose is used to that, and has faced women taller than de Randamie in the past. Elmose will also be fighting de Randamie just thirty minutes from the Dutch national’s hometown of Utrecht.
However, home advantage matters little to Elmose.
“I’m not fighting the crowd,” said Elmose - bluntly. “I think it’s very very good for Germaine, she’s home and she can fight in her hometown and she has a lot of supporters with her, I’m happy for her, good for her, and I think they should just come and cheer for her all they want, because it doesn’t matter to me.”
Though she stated the crowd won’t affect her, Elmose admitted that the occasion itself has unnerved her, but she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
“I have nerves,” conceded Elmose. “Because if something means something to you, you will get nervous and if I didn’t get nervous [for] my UFC debut it would be because it didn’t mean something for me. And seriously, if it doesn’t mean anything to you, to fight in the UFC, to go into the cage half naked, to fight another woman, who has been training to beat you, for like two months… you shouldn’t be doing that.”
However, Elmose is adamant that being nervous does not equate to being scared.
“I try to [convert my nerves into] adrenaline to get myself sharp and strong,” revealed Elmose.
“When I fight and I don’t have the adrenaline, I’m not as strong as I am if I have the adrenaline, and I need the nervousness to have the adrenaline. So I see it as a very good thing to be nervous.”
Along with owning a number of highlight reel knockouts, Elmose also owns one of the more interesting nicknames in her division (Panda), which she earned in a painful manner.
“I started with kickboxing and I’m not very tall,” reminded Elmose. “But I like to move forward and three months after my first time wearing boxing gloves, I had a fight, and nobody taught me to be defensive, so I just kinda ran into a lot of punches and I had a period to begin with [where I had] a lot of black eyes, so it was either panda or raccoon, and panda was cutest.”
You can see Panda take the first steps on her UFC journey versus Germaine de Randamie on May 8th at UFC Fight Night 87, live from Rotterdam.
You can follow Anna Elmose on twitter @AnnaElmose