Karolina Owczarz documents her journey from pro boxing to television star and now KSW prospect

Karolina Owczarz | KSW At 27, Karolina Owczarz has already enjoyed a professional boxing career prior to becoming a star on television in her native Poland before eventually deciding to try her hand at mixed martial arts.
Her journey through that labyrinth of occupations wasn’t exactly typical, especially considering the way she discovered her passion for combat sports not to mention transitioning into television where she works for one of the largest sports networks in her home country.
According to Owczarz, her initial introduction to boxing came before she was even a teenager but it wasn’t because she was necessarily in love with the sport when she first began training.
“I was not even 13 and I have to say I wasn’t a good girl. Not at all,” Owczarz said with a laugh when speaking to MMA Fighting. “I like bad boys. I used to go football games and I had all those guys as friends. I think I wanted to impress my older friends so I decided to go to a boxing class.
“After one year, I wasn’t interested in football anymore. I wanted to impress my older friends and it turned into the journey of my life.”
Owczarz has been an athlete almost her entire life after first trying her hand at volleyball and then turning to basketball before eventually discovering boxing.
The love for the sweet science led her to a professional career at 18 where she quickly amassed a perfect 4-0 record. Unfortunately, boxing wasn’t exactly paying the bills because the sport didn’t have a robust audience in Poland and it forced Owczarz to begin thinking about other options for her future.
“I was 20 when I stopped,” Owczarz explained. “I had 4-0 [record] and it wasn’t a good time for boxing in Poland. It wasn’t that popular. It was hard to find a good manager to take care of your career. I was kind of confused. I was a young girl.
“I moved to Warsaw but then I wasn’t making money from boxing and I didn’t want to take money from my parents.”
While it wasn’t exactly Lana Turner being discovered at a restaurant counter, Owczarz didn’t expect the job offer she soon received to hang up her boxing gloves for good and make the move into television.
“The boss of the biggest sports TV channel came to me because we had a few friends in common and he said ‘would you like to be our next TV star?” Owczarz said. “I said yes!
“I was 20, so I thought this would be the best opportunity for me. So I gave up on boxing and started my TV career, which became a five-year journey.”
At Polsat Sports, Owczarz became one of the faces of the network’s combat sports programming where she regularly attended boxing matches and MMA fights. She served as a presenter during certain events as well as interviewing athletes on camera at different shows.
Owczarz became a very recognizable face to Polish audiences but being around fights reignited her own desire to compete again.
When she gave up boxing, Owczarz never really imagined she’d want to return to combat sports but the desire started to grow as she began covering sports as a television journalist.
“I actually got jealous,” Owczarz said. “I was like this must be the best feeling. I decided I wanted to feel that again so I got back into being a professional sportswoman again.”
After making the decision to return to athletics, Owczarz decided to test her hand at boxing once again except she made a startling discovery after putting her career on hold for five years.
“When I wanted to get back into the sport in the first place, I was thinking about getting back into boxing. I went to a few classes and I was like oh my god this is so boring,” Owczarz said. “Like what was I doing here? This was so boring!”
That led her to try MMA instead and while the training was incredibly difficult, Owczarz fell in love with the sport right away. She began training with a slew of notable fighters from her home country including former UFC title contender Karolina Kowalkiewicz.
Just three months after her first MMA class, Owczarz was already preparing for her professional debut.
“I can’t even express it. It was the toughest lesson of my life,” Owczarz said. “I really wanted to die. I was supposed to have a debut in front of 60,000 people. We didn’t have time to take it slow. We had to go hard straight away. I didn’t have time to do easy sparrings. I had to go very, very hard straight away.
“It was a hard time. I was one big bruise. My whole body was covered with bruises. All of my shirts were covered in blood. But it all paid off, which was the best thing ever.”
On Nov. 14 at KSW 56, Owczarz will attempt to move her career record in MMA to 4-0 after dispatching her first three opponents in impressive fashion.
She’s now being touted as a potential star for the Poland-based promotion but don’t ask Owczarz to brag about her accomplishments or make outlandish declarations regarding her future in the sport.
Instead, she’s only thinking about getting a win on Friday and the rest will take care of itself.
“The only problem with me, I’m a very hard worker, I’m taking it very professionally but the only thing that I would change about my career is that I’m very humble,” Owczarz said. “You’ll never hear from me ‘I want to be a UFC champion one day, I want to be a KSW champion one day.’ I need to be more self-confident.
“I’ve learned a lot. I’m a good fighter but I’m too humble. My only goal right now is to win my fight this week.”


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