After things got heated and personal prior to their BKFC 6 fight, both Artem Lobov and Paulie Malignaggi have put their rift to bed.
Things got way too heated between Artem Lobov and Paulie Malignaggi during the build-up of their Bare Knuckle FC 6 fight. Lobov wasn’t even expecting all the bad blood to dissipate, considering how much of a “lowlife” he thought Malignaggi was.
“The Russian Hammer” emerged with the win via decision, which Malignaggi blasted the judges for. Lobov, however, took back his words and squashed his beef with “Magic Man.”
“I knew he was a tough guy. He’s experienced, he won 50 fights, I knew this was not going to be easy,” Lobov said at the BKFC 6 post-fight presser (via MMA Fighting).
“I said this before, for me I will always respect the fighter that shows up,” he added. “Paulie showed up to the spar. If you were to offer the same thing to many other boxers, they probably wouldn’t show up to the spar but he did and he did a full 12 rounds twice and he showed up again today.
“I take my hat off to him. He’s always been a fighter and he still is.”
And like Malignaggi, Lobov also had some issues with how the fight was officiated.
“I was a little bit surprised with the way the referee kind of worked the clinch. He was on top of me right away, trying to break up the clinch,” Lobov said. “If you look at some of the boxing fights, even in the boxing fights where the clinch is not allowed, they allow people to work a little longer in the clinch than they did in this where the clinch is allowed.
“The one time where Paulie’s talking about where I caught him and I was landing shots and then the ref comes on top of me and pulls me off. I’m like what’s going on and he says ‘you’ve got to be landing shots’ and I’m like what the f—k was I doing do you think? I was landing shots. I was throwing shots.”
Malignaggi also tipped his hat off to Lobov, despite how things almost went out of hand between them, pre-fight.
“I still don’t agree with everything that he did, but I’m sure people aren’t going to agree with the way I responded to everything too,” Malignaggi said during the post-fight presser. “So respect to Artem. He’s got a newborn baby, so he’s probably going to benefit from this and do well for himself.”
Also part of the card was TUF 1 alum Chris Leben, who lost to short-notice opponent Dakota Cochrane via unanimous decision.