Former kickboxing world champion and potential Jake Paul opponent Andrew Tate was once stabbed over a £2,500 drug debt just after winning his first title.
The American-born fighter lived the majority of his adult life in the UK, and was based in Luton where he trained under coach Amir Subasic at the Storm Gym, competing in kickboxing and MMA. And shortly after beating Jean Luc Benoit in a rematch for the ISKA world title, he found himself in a fight for his life after accruing a debt to a drug dealer.
Tate now says he struggles to find peace of mind over the incident, and says it affects the way he interacts with fans to this day after his attacker sneaked up on him with a knife. He managed to just about block the knife, instead taking a massive cut to his finger, but admits that he was inches from death in a scuffle which saw his finger "basically come off".
During a recent episode of his Tate Speech show on Rumble , the kickboxer said: "I had a problem with this guy, we were texting back-and-forth and he stopped replying to me. He never sent me a threat, which was quite an interesting dynamic for people to understand; when someone has true intention they don't threaten you.
"Then about four days later I was walking to my car in a car park late at night, typical English weather it was a little bit wet, dark, and I heard footsteps coming fast. And as I turned to see what the footsteps were he attempted to stab me and that's why anyone who knows me well knows that my finger basically came off where I put my hand and took the knife instead of my neck."
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Tate has told the story before, and left a number of key details out of his shortened version of events told on his Rumble channel. In other podcast appearances, he has detailed that the man who attempted to stab him was involved in drug dealing, and that he had accrued a relatively small debt of £2,500.
He since moved to Romania, where he says that he feels safer, and is also spending a lot of time in Dubai with fellow ex-fighter and boxing promoter Tam Khan. Prior to relocating to Romania, the multi-millionaire says that he would pay hairdressers in London £1,000 to shut down their shop for an hour to give him a haircut that normally would cost £50.
"I had a drug debt for £2,500, not even big money, and the guy was threatening me over text message and I was trying to reason with him and buy more time," Tate said on an earlier podcast. "He stopped replying to me and four days later he tried to stab me in a car park, this is the truth of violence - threats are not violent, if someone wants to hurt you, they don't threaten you."
