World number one lightweight kickboxer Giorgio Petrosyan is not a man accustomed to being taken lightly by opponents.
His 77-1-1 (35 KO’s) record and absolute technical perfection usually ensure that his opposition keep their minds firmly on their own game, but GLORY 7 challenger Hafid El Boustati (67-7-3, 19 KO’s) has broken the mould.
Petrosyan is usually a picture of absolute calm at all times but El Boustati has seriously annoyed him.
“I think that he is a great fighter, an intelligent person, but I think that he speaks too much,” Petrosyan snapped in Milan, Italy ahead of Saturday night’s headlining fight against El Boustati.
Several weeks ago, El Boustati said in a pre-fight interview that Petrosyan was an excellent technician but fights too defensively. “He fights like a rabbit,” the Dutch-Moroccan laughed. “He is scared of getting into a real fight.”
Petrosyan intends to make him eat his words. He seems as if he literally cannot believe any opponent would dare to say such a thing about him. For only the second time in his career, an opponent has made Petrosyan actually furious.
“Most of my other opponents have never said anything before the fight. The only one who said anything was Artur Kyshenko, he said I was afraid. In the end it was a great match and he was the one who was afraid; he lost,” the Armenian-Italian lightweight explains.
“El Boustati said that I am a rabbit, that I fight like a rabbit and I am afraid of him. I don’t know where he got this talk of rabbits from - we will see in the ring who is the rabbit.”