For fans that are anxious to see how a former boxing champ will attempt to deal with takedowns, submissions, you know, something else besides punches (and don’t have the patience to wait around for James Toney’s UFC debut), they might want to catch Shine Fight’s May 15th card, when former WBC / WBA welterweight champ Ricardo Mayorga squares off with UFC vet Din Thomas. Now although Mayorga had a reputation in boxing for being one bad ass dude, the 36 year-old-fighter will take on a guy in Thomas, who not only is a black belt in jiu-jitsu, he’s a pretty refined striker. In other words, Mayorga aint getting no tomato can in his first MMA fight (not sure if he realizes this however…read on).
If you’ve caught any of Toney’s recent interviews, the boxer doesn’t seem overly concerned about this whole ‘ultimate fighting thing’, and based off Mayorga’s comments at a pre-fight presser in NYC yesterday, Thomas doesn’t really scare him. In fact, Mayorga went as far to say that the family of Thomas should prepare to wear black, something about having Din’s wife, before stating that he’ll be the man and Thomas will be the woman on May 15th…Uh-huh. Despite the verbal ‘barbs’, Din kept it together fairly well, until Mayorga lit up a cigarette (which might explain why he didn’t exactly looked ‘ripped’ at the press conference) and blew smoke in his face. That’s when sh-t almost went down.
To check out the entire presser head here and be thankful you don’t have to inhale second hand smoke (thanks to MMA Weekly for the clip).