Social media star Salt Papi has explained his boxing background and denied having multiple amateur bouts before making his debut last year and landing a number of big knockouts.
The TikTok sensation has garnered over 5.5million followers across social media after having his first fight back in March, where he defeated Halal Ham by decision. He proceeded to take the influencer boxing world by storm, knocking out streamer Andy Warski before landing a career-best stoppage win over MMA fighter and YouTuber Josh Brueckner.
And after comfortably putting away Brueckner, a veteran of 14 MMA fights and two professional boxing bouts, fans began to theorise that he had competed as an amateur in the Philippines before moving to the UK as a teenager. Salt Papi denies the claim, telling Mirror Fighting in an exclusive chat that he was simply a fan of the sport, and began training early last year.
"Growing up I'd always been a fan of boxing," he explained. "Manny Pacquiao is like the biggest superstar in the Philippines and he's the one that everyone wants to be like. Boxing and basketball are like the main sports in the Philippines, so obviously as a child we always watched Pacquiao growing up and I would imitate what he does, everybody looked up to him.
"But I never had access to a boxing gym, I never really trained like that, most of the time I was copying [Pacquiao] if I had a few street fights back in school growing up. The only time I had access to a proper boxing gym was last year. Most of my life I'd been in a normal gym and we had a punching bag there where I would work on my technique.
"I would watch a lot of boxing tutorials and do some sparring in the streets with other basketball players, I played a lot of basketball because it was my main sport. Then sometimes we would just spar, I got much better sparring because I watched a lot of tutorials and I would try to do it."
The influencer was approached to compete in a fight on the prelims of last March's Showstar Boxing event, headlined by Deji vs Alex Wassabi, at which point he decided to take on the services of a trainer. He met his current coach Solomon through promoter Kay Shah, and they went on to work together for the following few months honing his craft.
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It certainly is a far cry from the multitude of alleged amateur bouts he had competed in during his early years, which he notes would have to have taken place before he turned 13 and moved to the UK. After that point, there would be a record of any amateur bouts in which he competed.
"My favourite move was the pull-counter, like Floyd Mayweather," he continued. "Solomon helped me to improve there and thought me a lot of other moves that I can do and I can learn really quick. It's crazy, it's BS because I came to England when I was 13 so obviously if I did amateur here, it would show.
"In the Philippines I was really fat, I was young, we were broke and didn't have much money or access to the gym. We would most of the time just go to school like a normal kid. I couldn't speak English, I didn't know anybody and all of my friends were in the Philippines.
"I was a dancer, too. I started dancing when I was 14, 15, but I was always a fan of boxing like Manny or Floyd. Whenever there was a fight I would always watch them."
