Randine Eckholm: "She’s a tough opponent and I’m sure they are trying to feed me to her"
Randine Eckholm, 30, will look to use her mixed martial arts and kickboxing experience to overcome the odds as she meets two-time Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship veteran Britain Hart at BKFC 14 on Nov. 13 in Miami, Florida.
Eckholm, who served as a Military Policeman in the U.S. Army, including tours at prisons in Fort Lewis and Guantanamo Bay, will be making her bare knuckle debut after spending the past few years getting all of her education and clinicals completed to become a Evasive cardiovascular specialist.
“I was getting my job placement in order. That’s what brought me down from Washington to New Mexico. I insert pacemakers and cardiac devices and do ablations for people with arrythmia problems. I also do stent valve replacements to help those who have had heart attacks.”
Now currently training at FIT NHB in Albuquerque, Eckholm is New Mexico’s Golden Gloves champion at 141-pounds.
“I really love fighting still, that’s why I’m coming to Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship,” Eckholm said.
“I’ve had a lot of kickboxing bouts in addition to those few MMA fights,” she said. “The last time I fought though was a little over a year ago. I moved down to New Mexico and refocused my career. I started re-training, was looking to get a fight, and tried to get a few boxing matches down here and nobody would fight me. My amateur experience had gotten to be too much, nobody would take a fight against me. That was irritating. I was like ‘you know what, I’m done, let’s just move on to the next level where I don’t have to worry if someone is afraid, they are just gonna step up.’”
That’s when Eckholm reached out to Bare Knuckle FC and a contract was offered.
When asked about her opponent’s experience in facing former champions Bec Rawlings and Christine Ferea, Eckholm didn’t seem to be too bothered by being the rookie in the fight.
“The publicity, the media, that’s the hard part for me,” Eckholm said. “The fighting, I don’t care about that. I love that. I’m not underestimating her. She’s a tough opponent and I’m sure they are trying to feed me to her, but I’m not gonna let that happen.”
Eckholm understands that Hart is arguably the favorite, and that she has a fight ahead of her, but she won’t let the expectations of others control the outcome.
“I expect a lot of people to underestimate me and assume that I’m just going to go in there and get pieced up by her and that she is going to put on a clinic and that I’ll be someone she walks over. But, I expect different. I’m gonna bring a brawl. I’m gonna bring a face pace that she just can’t keep up with.”
Headlining the Nov. 13 Bare Knuckle FC 14 fight card is a fight for the promotion's 155-pound title as current champion Luis Palomino puts his belt on the line against the challenger, Jim Alers.