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00:00By the way, it's Palomino versus Howard H.D. Davis,
00:02lightweight, and this one stacks from top to bottom.
00:05You got plenty of other great fights as well.
00:07You got Perdomo against Harrellius at heavyweight.
00:08You got Ibarrola and Velasquez there fighting
00:11at bantamweight, maybe even a title eliminator there.
00:13But as we said, two of the best,
00:15two guys who are constantly in the title picture.
00:16One that held on to titles for a long time to beat KFC,
00:19and that is Luis Palomino, who we bring on right now.
00:22Baboon is joining us again.
00:23Luis, it's been a long time since we saw you,
00:26since that fight against Trout last year.
00:29I know you had some injuries coming out of that,
00:31but was that what's kept you out almost a year now,
00:33or was there other things?
00:34Was it just not being able to fight fighters
00:36that want to step up against a guy
00:37who's one of the best ever doing to beat KFC?
00:40What's been the holds up
00:41and getting you back in the squared circle?
00:43Well, first of all, man, thank you for having me.
00:45And yeah, it's been quite way too long,
00:48and no injuries, no injuries at all.
00:50I've just been waiting.
00:51I've been waiting and asking, having my hand raised,
00:53waiting for my rematch, waiting for everything.
00:55But talking about the Ashton Trout fight,
00:59I fought at 165 only for the simple reason
01:01that there was nothing else left for me at 155.
01:04I went up to 165 to make more money,
01:06to get bigger challenges, and I got the Trout fight.
01:09I didn't get my weight, it didn't go my way that night.
01:13And I waited a whole entire year for that rematch
01:16at a weight class I don't belong in.
01:17I just truly do not belong in 165.
01:19I can barely hang on to the weight.
01:21It cost me to keep on to that weight,
01:24power lifting, to eating the way I was eating.
01:26So I'm back to my natural habitat here,
01:28you know, at 155, walk around 170 pounds light, easy.
01:32I have my head coach, Maha, right here with me.
01:34And Coach Mateo, even though he doesn't like to be
01:37called a coach, he's a businessman,
01:39but he's the one that put me on to Coach Maha.
01:42And, you know, we're ready to go.
01:43We made a lot of changes in this camp.
01:47Made a lot of changes in this camp.
01:48You know, I don't make the same mistake twice.
01:50You know what I mean?
01:51So I had to make rearrangements.
01:53I had to get a big team behind me, a real team.
01:57And that's what I did.
01:58I went after it.
01:58I got in contact with Mateo.
01:59Mateo took me in as one of his own.
02:01And he said, you know what, man, you know,
02:03I can do things for you,
02:04but nothing like what my coach can do for you.
02:07So this is Coach Maha, this is Mateo's coach.
02:10And this is the reason why I have him all night though,
02:11because this is my team now.
02:12I want everybody to know what's going on.
02:14What with the boxer family,
02:16we're only champions come out of.
02:18Tell us about that.
02:19Tell us about the change and, you know,
02:20your mindset here and the training.
02:22I mean, obviously, you know,
02:23what you had was working for a long time
02:25before that child fight, undefeated,
02:26double champion, the BKFC,
02:28no one can beat you until, you know,
02:30no one really can say, you know,
02:31they beat you, beat you.
02:33Obviously it was a decision.
02:34That's it, you know, it's a close fight.
02:35That can go either way.
02:36But what made you want to make the big change
02:38and, you know, build a team that you have built
02:40now around you?
02:41Well, you know, there's,
02:43I attracted a lot of people to my old gym
02:45and never going to point no fingers at nobody
02:46or anything like that.
02:47You know, there was a point in time
02:49that I didn't feel like I was improving anymore
02:52for quite a little time.
02:53And people were coming in
02:54where my attention was going elsewhere.
02:57You know, it was part of the reason
02:58why I was so cold in the trial fight
03:00where, you know, my trainer was downstairs.
03:02I only had one trainer, you know,
03:03and I was upstairs alone, cold.
03:05If you look at the fight,
03:06I didn't break a sweat to the fourth round.
03:08And you don't have to make any excuses,
03:09it's just facts are facts.
03:10So, you know, I needed to evolve.
03:13I needed to come out of my comfort zone.
03:15You know, when you were in a place for long enough,
03:16people respect you a little too much.
03:18Even your teammates were respected too much.
03:19Even your coach was respected a little too much.
03:21And, you know, they'll keep you
03:22in that comfort zone sometimes.
03:24So I had to like, you know,
03:25one of the biggest things that I have
03:27that makes me who I am is I adapt, you know,
03:29and I adapt to circumstances.
03:31So I needed to put myself in a different environment
03:33where I'm being challenged.
03:35And that's when I got together with Mateo.
03:36Mateo put me on to Coach Maja
03:38and it's been none but growth from there.
03:40All I've done is improve.
03:42Another thing is the personality of fighting, right?
03:44I'm an animal.
03:45I've always been known from the cagey fights
03:47and everything in the past for war,
03:50looking for like head hunting, looking for knockouts.
03:52But I was holding a perfect record in BKFC.
03:56You know, as you mentioned,
03:57nobody in BKFC has defended a title six times.
04:00I defended it six times successfully.
04:02I'm the only eight-time world champion in BKFC history.
04:05You know what I mean?
04:06So, you know, I was protecting that,
04:09oh, kind of like protecting that virginity.
04:11Well, it got popped.
04:13You know what I mean?
04:13So that other side of me, that animal had to be reborn.
04:16And that's where Coach Maja and Mateo came in
04:18where, you know, they brought that aggression back out of me
04:21but under a crazy control, like controlled chaos.
04:25You know, that's where we are right now.
04:28Yeah, so basically, you know,
04:29through the time that Luis Palomino's been here at Boxer,
04:32you know, just to give you guys a little insight,
04:35here at Boxer, we have, you know,
04:36multiple world champions that come out of here,
04:39like David Benavides recently just did
04:41his last two camps here,
04:43Guillermo Rigandal.
04:46There's a list of boxers and world champions
04:49that come out of this gym.
04:50And just adding Maja to the team, you know,
04:52he was one of my coaches back when I was getting ready
04:55for the amateur world championships
04:57as I come from a boxing background.
04:59And he's, you know, the pedigree of fighters
05:01that comes from Russia out of the USSR
05:03is on a different level.
05:05So being able to bring a quality coach into this
05:07to work with Baboon,
05:09it's just taking him to a whole nother level
05:11just because of the experience that this man
05:13has got to give to Baboon strategically,
05:16not just on the training side,
05:18but more as on the mental side
05:20to be able to get him adapted in the ring
05:22to universal different styles.
05:24And that's what it's about.
05:26That's what it takes to become a world champion.
05:28It just comes down to being able to, you know,
05:30go against any style that's in front of you.
05:32And that's what he's given Baboon.
05:33He's given him a sense of understanding,
05:35whether it's a Southpaw, whether it's a tall guy,
05:37whether it's a small guy, a big guy, you name it,
05:40he's gonna be able to adapt very quickly
05:41within the early rounds,
05:43and he'll be able to dominate with, you know, a knockout.
05:46And that's what he's aiming for for this fight.
05:48He wants to come back on a level of the element of surprise
05:53and to basically be that guy in BKFC
05:55that can just dominate
05:57and just shake the combat sports world up.