Hey guys, so I wanna let you in on my experience leading up to this fight. Overall it was great. But shit…. preparing was really hard. There were some days that I actually questioned why I was doing this shit if I didn’t need to.
But hey, it turned out well, and I’m staying motivated to keep getting better. I won the fight, but not all of it was easy and sweet. There were moments when I felt really nervous and unsure and had to focus on calming myself down and using that anxiety as fire. Anyhow, let’s get into it.
Preparing For The Fight
The Sunday leading up to the week of the fight was my final day of sparring. Then I had some nice workouts on Monday and Tuesday, but it was nothing too crazy. I was just there trying to open up the lungs and getting some sweat in. You guys probably saw a couple clips of sparring, but that’s it.
And that’s because it’s not considered good etiquette to show sparring practices. After all, people often look really bad. But sparring is where you work out, try to get comfortable with new things, and improve your skillset. What you saw in those clips isn’t heavy sparring, trust me.
On Tuesday, I got an excellent training session with 10-ounce gloves, which was the same weight used in the fight. In the beginning, I started training with 16-ounce gloves. But I wanted to push myself harder, so I went up to 18-ounce gloves, which are heavy as shit.
I completed the rest of my training with these gloves, so I was getting used to twice as much weight compared to what I used in the fight. That’s why some of you were like “damn!” when you saw my speed in some sparring clips—it’s the heavy gloves!
Finding Out Who My Opponent Was
So the fight was in Atlantic City. We flew to Philadelphia and then rented a car. It was about an hour’s drive, so it wasn’t a big deal. We got to the hotel, and there was nobody there. It was crazy, almost like Vegas but without people and next to the sea, which is kind of cool.
At the hotel is when I met my opponent for the first time. He saw me, and he came straight to introduce himself. I actually didn’t know I was fighting him because he was a replacement. I was initially supposed to fight a guy who is 270, but he pulled back, so I wasn’t able to know anything about my opponent going into the fight.
He was replaced with this new guy, which I wasn’t happy about because I didn’t know anything about him. I hit up a guy who fought him in the past to talk about this guy, but he didn’t see the message. I also tried searching for this guy online, and I couldn’t find anything, so I didn’t know who I was stepping into the ring with.
A lot of people have talked shit about my opponent’s record because, at the time, he was 0-2 but let me tell you something about records. There was a fight on this same card. It was between a guy with a 4-0 record and a guy with an 0-3 record. The guy with the 0-3 record knocked the other guy out.
Listen, when you step into the ring, and you’re 2 minutes into the first round, it’s now a mano a mano match, records don’t matter at that point. Whoever is better prepared is gonna win. Whoever wants it more is gonna win—that simple.
Also, you can’t go off of how someone’s body looks because that doesn’t matter sometimes. One of the best boxers in the world is Tyson Fury, and he doesn’t have a nice body. It doesn’t matter how muscular, how tight. If a guy is conditioned to fight, he can fight. And big dudes can hit for real. They can knock you out with one strike, which is less common in lighter divisions.
Regarding my opponent, I had nothing to go off, and it’s not like I cherry-picked or anything. The matchmakers matched me with this guy. He was 0-2, but if it was purely on odds, the odds were in his favor because he had the experience. And it’s because when you step into that professional arena, it is so different.
Right Before The Fight
Look, before I went down to get my hands wrapped and get my gloves on, I took a long hot shower, and I played CT’s track “I am the one” because it gets me going, but for some reason, this time, it wasn’t helping. I’m not gonna lie to you, I wanted to cry in the shower.
The thought I had in my head was that my baby boy is gonna be there and what if you catch a big shot and you get hurt? What if you lose? Those thoughts were killing me, and it’s always a real possibility, no matter how good and prepared you are. In my mind, I was thinking about all the people that were gonna be watching me and how much I had hyped this fight. I was worried about losing. But I tried to breathe in and to use all of that as fire.
I stepped out of the shower and then went to get my hands wrapped. My people were there, so that made me feel better. And my man Jim Jones was there too. He was supposedly there to walk me out, but when the time came to walk out, there were many people there—we had an entourage. I was still really nervous, but it was cool.
So I’m walking up there, and I get to the ring, and from the moment you step in until the bell rings, it’s supposed to be a couple minutes, but it felt like forever. But then the bell rang. I felt nothing, I heard nothing. All that mattered was that I was in that ring with that other guy. I felt like I was naked in the woods surrounded by predators. You know it was my first time fighting with 10 ounce gloves and without headgear—I felt really vulnerable.
During The Fight
The bell rang, and we came at each other. But I knew I had to stay calm. In combat sports, you gotta try to calm yourself down. It’s not about going out there like crazy trying to tear somebody’s head out. You’re gonna get your ass beat if you try to do that. So you gotta keep a cool head.
I first wanted to stop him and use my jab to measure him and try to get some space. But he came to try to win the fight right away. Listen, if he had beat me, his name would have gotten on the map, you know what I mean?
This guy makes a living from fighting, so it was in his best interest to try to come out there and swing for the fences. In the lower weight classes, you don’t really see someone come out just trynna gun, but bigger guys sometimes do it and finish the fight quick.
Thinking back, all the nerves I was feeling kind of put me in a state of alert, so I saw everything better. I was trying to work on getting closer to start throwing some punches. But before that, I was still able to hit him with shots that I could tell were hurting him without me sitting down on them. Ultimately he went down from various shots.
The first left hook I threw hurt him, I could tell. I saw he was susceptible to that punch, so I kept lancing it, and I caught him with a beautiful left hook. Then he tried to mix it up with me, and I hit him nicely, and that’s when he went down.
I looked into his eyes, and I was thinking, “please get up” because I was so close to getting into that range where I could throw my punches and really hurt him. But he didn’t want to keep going. At first, I was upset. But then I thought about it for a little bit, and I was like, why am I mad at this guy for not wanting to sustain more damage? It’s alright, I understand that. It’s not the way I do things, but I can have empathy for his decision.
You know I think that guy has potential. If I was to recommend something, I’d tell him to come down one weight class because he’s got speed and range. And he also has heart— he wants to fight. Anyway, that’s what I’d recommend, he can do whatever he wants, of course.
Conclusion (question for you)
So to wrap it up, at the end of the day, I got the victory, and it was dope—it felt good. It was some pressure off of my back. I could hear my kid getting excited, saying it was awesome, and he’s like me, we don’t really get excited about anything.
So that made me feel really good and really proud. Part of the main reason I did this fight was that I had told my sons that I was gonna do it. And I wanted to show them that when you give your word, you follow through no matter how difficult it is.
That’s how you develop character. My training was really hard, and it made it even harder that I was doing it all by myself for the most part. When you’re with a team or with someone who’s there on top of you, keeping you in check and keeping you motivated, especially during challenging days. It makes it easier.
Shoutout to my boy Paul Malignaggi for the comments—it was an honor! What did you think of the fight? Would you have done something different if you were me? Let me know in the comments!