Cruiserweight contender Robin Safar has not yet watched back his victory over Yamil Peralta, but he is expecting the worst when he does.<\/p>\n
Safar climbed off the floor for the first time in his life to win a tight decision on May 22, but the victory has left him poised near the top of the 200lbs ranks.<\/p>\n
He is No. 2 with the WBO, No. 4 with the WBC, No. 13 with the WBA and sits at No. 15 in the IBF ratings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not my best performance, but I got the victory, it\u2019s all that matters,\u201d he told BoxingScene. \u201cI won basically on will and determination. That was it, not skills. I didn\u2019t show no skills and a lot of other things \u2013 a lot of other things. Everything had to do with me. It hadn\u2019t anything to do with him, to be honest. He was exactly what I thought he was, and he did exactly what he was supposed to do, and I thought he was going to do. It was just that my body didn\u2019t want to do what I wanted to do, if that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the second-round knockdown, Safar explained: \u201cWhen it happened, I was kind of embarrassed, to be honest. Damn, like, never been dropped, you know? So I was like, \u2018Fuck, yo. Not here.\u2019 And I got into my mind a little bit. I got a little irritated and mad, but then I started thinking, I said I can\u2019t get emotional, you know? So then I ended up, instead of being more aggressive and mad, basically, I started calming down too much, and then I started getting more cautious. I started thinking more about what he was going to do than what I had to do, right after it happened. And then, after like the fourth or fifth, then I started just doing what I was supposed to do. But then I also felt like my body didn’t want to do what I wanted to do. It didn’t listen to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Safar felt he should have let his hands go more often and used his jab more, but he was hindered by a problem with his left shoulder, though he didn\u2019t want to use that as an excuse. He even went as far as to call it his worst night in the ring, amateur or pro.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I still got the victory through a C-minus performance,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
There is an upside, however, and that is that he now feels it will mark him as easy prey for those who might not have previously wanted to entertain him.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s gonna think, \u2018Yo, if that dude dropped him, then I can drop him.\u2019 I don\u2019t care about that. Styles make fights. In the end, it all matters who you’re fighting, when you’re fighting them, and how you’re feeling that day when you wake up, so it could also be a blessing in disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Safar is now 20-0 (13 KOs) and wants to be fighting again sooner rather than later. He\u2019s targeting a September return but is already back in the gym after a vacation to Japan.<\/p>\n
He wants the big names, and would like to fight either of the stars from the Zuffa Boxing event in Bournemouth that saw Chris Billam-Smith and Ryan Rozicki go to war.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was definitely an entertaining fight, for sure,\u201d said Safar. \u201cI liked to watch it. And I got more props for Ryan than I did before, for sure. He\u2019s a warrior. Skill-wise, I didn\u2019t see anything special, but heart-wise and balls, I saw a lot. But that\u2019s just a part of boxing, you know? I would love to fight Chris Billam-Smith. I would love to fight Ryan Rozicki, too. I want to fight everybody in the division. Everybody. It don’t really matter who I\u2019m fighting. It\u2019s just got to be a name or it\u2019s got to be a title. That\u2019s just it. That\u2019s what I’m thinking right now. A hundred percent. Jai Opetaia, David Benavidez, Noel Mikaelian, those are the people I want\u2026 the people that are with the belts and the resumes, you know? So obviously those are the people that I want, but then I want everybody else. Me and Rozicki were supposed to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Safar, who lives in Las Vegas but was born in Sweden, revealed that he had spoken to the teams of both Billam-Smith and Rozicki before the two cruiserweights signed for Zuffa Boxing and fought one another.<\/p>\n
Safar felt he was particularly close to a fight with the Canadian, and so fired off a direct message on social media when he learned that Rozicki was going elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was supposed to fight him,\u201d Safar said. \u201cWe had already agreed to fight. Everything was already a done deal, but the contract wasn’t signed. So then, the day of the contract being signed from my side, the day after they announced that he signed with Zuffa. And then when he signed with Zuffa, I even DM’d him. I said, \u2018What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why did you do this?\u2019 It kind of bothered me because I wanted to fight Ryan Rozicki and I had already planned to fight him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Safar had a very different opponent in Peralta.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in my feelings when I wrote him,\u201d Safar added. \u201cSo it wasn\u2019t a gentle approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Safar is with Golden Boy and remains uncertain about what direction the landscape of the sport will go with fighters in his weight class being signed with Zuffa. He points to Conor Benn being able to fight the likes of Regis Prograis and Ryan Garcia as signs that he could still fight Zuffa signees like Opetaia, Rozicki, or Billam-Smith.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to fight Ryan, I want to fight Ryan bad. I want to fight Chris bad,\u201d he added. \u201cBecause I know what I’ll be able to do against a guy like them, a come-forward type dude.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s all I\u2019m looking for. Because if you think about it, everybody that I fought, they back up. Everybody that I\u2019m fighting is backing up. There\u2019s nobody that stands there with me. But I know those two got the style that they don\u2019t really give a fuck. I\u2019m going to get knocked out or you get knocked out. And that\u2019s also going to bring the entertainment to the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cruiserweight contender Robin Safar has not yet watched back his victory over Yamil Peralta, but he is expecting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6102,10078,115581,115744,101,56,54,55,199236],"class_list":["post-643867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxingscene","tag-cruiserweight-boxing","tag-robin-safar","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-yamil-peralta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}