Iranian Hulk has apologised to the people of Iran after he was embarrassingly stopped in the first round of his boxing fight with Kazakh Titan.
Hulk - real name Sajad Gharibi - showed a complete lack of boxing skills as he was dropped inside two minutes of the main event of Wicked N'Bad's white-collar boxing show in Dubai on Sunday night. The heavyweight continually turned his back on his opponent before the bout was sensibly waved off when he hit the canvas.
Titan - real name Djumanov Almat Bakhytovich - hardly had the skills of Anthony Joshua but was at least able to throw a punch as he celebrated his 'victory'. The fight was the culmination of a back-and-forth rivalry on social media which began when Hulk's fight with British strongman Martyn Ford was cancelled at short-notice.
And in a short interview after his defeat, Hulk said: "I have nothing to say but I am ashamed and I apologise to the Iranian people." His coach provided a more elaborate explanation for the 300lb heavyweight's performance, claiming he only had two weeks to train. "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.
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"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."
Hulk is likely to incur the wrath of his Iranian countrymen and women after his defeat, having done so when he was preparing for his fight with Ford. He was pushed over when the rivals faced off before the bout was eventually scrapped with Hulk later admitting he felt suicidal over the event, and that his mum had disowned him.
