Former World's Strongest Man Eddie Hall sparred with top cruiserweight prospect Viddal Riley in preparation for his fight with Thor Bjornsson last weekend.
The British strongman worked with unbeaten boxer and social media star Riley back in November, with the footage only emerging now after his loss to Bjornsson. Hall was defeated on the scorecards by his long-time rival in Dubai on Saturday night, despite scoring a knockdown.
And after the fight was complete, Riley took to his YouTube channel to share footage of the pair working together over a five-round session late last year. At the time, Hall was recently recovered from a bicep surgery, and enlisted Riley to help him get experience against a higher level of sparring partner than he had been used to up to that point.
The footage, which begins at round two due to a filming issue, shows Riley essentially moving around as Hall looks to deal with a slick, fast moving cruiserweight. Hall doesn't don headgear, so the London fighter tends not to load up on any of the punches that he does throw throughout the video, which has been viewed over 200,000 times in less than a day.
After the session, where Riley took minimal damage due to his ability to manoeuvre the ring like a seasoned fighter, he admitted that he could feel Hall's power on punches that he was blocking with his arms. "It feels like some of the shots that I block it's like 'whoosh'!" Riley said following the fifth round. "You can feel the force on your hands, you can feel it."
Hall then admitted that he hadn't yet been in the ring with anyone who had hands as quick as the former youth Olympian, who at the time was 4-0 as a professional. "I haven't been in with someone who's been that fast where your hand is down and you just catch [a punch] - I thought I had you a few times but then you blocked me again.
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"I want to thank Viddal so much for coming up with his busy schedule in the lead-up to a fight," Hall continued. "Three weeks out from a fight and he's come and sparred the world's heaviest man so he's got big balls."
Hall had opted to keep his training footage away from the public eye going into the fight, hoping to surprise his rival who had taken the opposite approach. While Hall was first training and then recovering from his injury, Bjornsson competed three times in exhibition bouts with professional boxers Steven Ward and Simon Vallily as well as a quick stoppage win over arm-wrestling champion Devon Larratt.
And he even allowed for the possibility that he could lose to Bjornsson, telling fans who he knew would only be seeing the footage after the fight that he'd "done all he can". "If you're watching this after the fight, hopefully you enjoy what's been going on," he told fans in the video. "I've been hiding all this time so if I lose then I've done everything I can and I'll have a tattoo of Thor on my back, life is life."
