The Iranian Hulk aka Sajad Gharibi had a rough time yesterday at his boxing debut. The 30 year old Iranian influencer was all about flexing on social media but when it came down to it he put on an embarassing performance against Djumanov Almat Bakhytovich also (*barely) known as ‘The Kazakh Titan’.
Once the bout was over, Gharibi gave a quick statement saying:
“I have nothing to say but I am ashamed and I apologize to the Iranian people.”
His coach provided a more elaborate explanation:
“Thank you for your good and bad messages,” he said. “I just wanted to five a brief explanation about the fight. The fight was set before Sajad came to me and he signed the contract. There was no way to cancel it unless he paid a big fine for the cancellation.
“We had a bad situation. Sajad came to Tehran for his training [but] we had a financial problem, the sponsor didn’t keep their word. In short, Sajad trained with me for only two weeks and I told him he was not ready to fight. But I had to be with him because he had to fight and somebody had to coach him.”
“His opponent was the same level as Sajad but Sajad couldn’t do much, I am so sorry. I tried to help him but we had a really short time for it. I hope we can fix it in the future.”
Gharibi has been super sensitive to criticism ever since his family disowned him after his embarassing face off against Martyn Ford for their now cancelled bout. Ford also weighed in on the outcome of his boxing debut adding:
“You only need to watch the fight, to understand EXACTLY why I pulled out. I just hope those who encouraged and pushed this fight are there to support him after. To me, I would rather walk away and risk being called a coward over potentially what could have happened to this kid in the ring if we had fought.”
“There is NO way he should ever have been passed fit to fight, and everyone surrounding this needs to question themselves, and take responsibility for the backlash of what will now follow. This is not entertainment, it is bullying and taking advantage of a clearly delusional human being.”