(Video courtesy YouTube/rattsnakeratt)
Having watched quite a few of Eric "Butterbean" Esch‘s MMA fights over the years, purely for the comedic value, I’ve taken to calling him "Turtle," because every time he got on his back he was fucked.
Despite joining American Top Team — a camp known as much for its high-level Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts as it is for it’s dangerous strikers, Esch has done very little to round out his game in his nearly seven years in the sport. He’s basically just an older, fatter version of the hard-punching jobber he was in boxing.
So when he says things like "Mariusz Pudzianowski is going to be the best heavyweight in the world in two years," his opinion doesn’t hold much water.
He could be trying to talk up the terrible showing he had against The World’s Strongest Man" last weekend in Poland in a first round TKO loss that looked suspiciously like a WWE work, but if Turtle Butterbean truly believes that Mariusz will be the next Fedor or Brock, Moosin might want to reconsider having him as its spokesperson.
"He’s learning very much. He’s come a long way. In two years, I don’t think there would be anybody out there that would be able to compete with Mariusz. So, Poland, they might have to wait two years to have the best MMA man out there. But it’s coming. He’s learning very, very fast," Esch said in an interview after his KSW bout last weekend. "He’s a very smart man. He’s not stupid. He’s very smart. I’ve never said anything bad about Mario, other than he punches like a girl. But he’s a very smart man, very nice, very strong. Two years he’ll be unbeatable."