Yeah, bitches, that's right! Imagine it: Badr Hari's speed, timing, power, aggression and killer instinct mixed with the defensive mastery of Bernard Hopkins, the beautiful footwork of Shane Mosely, and the strategic brilliance of Brother Nazim.
It's a perfect storm. When this man hits his stride, no one stands a fucking chance.
Badr Hari retires from kickboxing and will be heading to the US for a boxing career
September 28, 2011 -
Badr Hari has decided to retire from kickboxing to start a new career as a boxer. On January 28, 2012, Badr Hari will fight his last kickboxing match on the IT’S SHOWTIME event in WTC Expo in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. After this fight, he will go to the United Stated to fully work on his boxing career.
This announcement will be a shock to the millions of kickboxing fans all around the world, but the sport of boxing will welcome and embrace this charismatic fighter.
In the U.S., many see Badr Hari as the man to relaunch the popularity of boxing, and he’s being seen as a mix of Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.
Badr doesn’t just want to say goodbye to kickboxing and therefore he has chosen Gökhan Saki as his last opponent in kickboxing. Many millions of fans of combat sports have been waiting for this fight for years, and now they have the opportunity to see it.
If K-1 will host a World Grand Prix this year, Badr will also participate to that. The Grand Prix Final is scheduled for December 10 in China. If this World Grand Prix will take place, depends if K-1 will be able to pay its debts to IT’S SHOWTIME and others. If not, the fight on January 28 will be Badr’s only remaining fight as a kickboxer.
An amazing combat sports arena will be built in the WTC Expo venue in Leeuwarden, in which all spectators have the feeling they are in the ring themselves. Unfortunately, only 5000 people can watch this event live in the venue. The presale starts October 15, and only on this day, the € 125 tickets will be available for € 100.
Fight card January 28, 2012 in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands:
Badr Hari vs Gökhan Saki
Daniel Ghita vs Hesdy Gerges (IT’S SHOWTIME world title heavyweight)
Tyrone Spong vs Melvin Manhoef
Errol Zimmerman vs Rico Verhoeven
Ben Edwards vs Ricardo van den Bos
Murat Direkçi vs Robin van Roosmalen
Lhoucine ‘Aussie’ Ouzgni vs Yohan Lidon (IT’S SHOWTIME world title 73kg max)
Gago Drago vs Hinata Watanabe
Chahid Oulad El Hadj vs Harut Grigorian
Danyo Ilunga vs Mourad Bouzidi
Michael Duut vs Anderson ‘Braddock’ Silva
Henry van Opstal vs Hafid el Boustati
www.fansofk1.com/article
^ spong V. manhoef on that card too is sick.
only time will tell... much rather see him kickingboxing tbh but if k1 is dead then boxing is the smartest move for him forsure.
sprong vs manhoef is gonna be sick!!!
http://www.fighthype.com/pages/content10931.html
Percy Crawford did an interview with Brother Naazim, and the subject of Badr Hari came up. Here's an excerpt, posted solely because they have some gay ass javascript on FightHype to prevent copy/pasting and it pisses me off.
PC: You recently met with kickboxer Badr Hari and his trainer Mike Passenier. They really wanted to meet you and it happened. He wants to work with you, man. How is that looking?
NR: Badr Hari is a good dude and so is his trainer, Mike. You know, Badr Hari won me over, man. As soon as we met, he told me he wouldn't let me down and that he would make me proud. But that's not what won me over. What won me over is he said, "I don't want to be top 10. I want to be the fucking best." He has the right mentality to do this shit right here. I tell fighters all of the time, "You are not considered great until you beat someone that you weren't supposed to beat." Ali did it several times. Ali wasn't supposed to beat Liston, he wasn't supposed to beat Foreman, and he wasn't supposed to beat Spinks. He proved his greatness over and over again. Foreman did the same thing with Joe Frazier. Joe Frazier did the same thing in his first fight with Ali. So you don't prove your greatness until you win a fight that you weren't supposed to win. This kid Badr has the right mentality to win a lot of fights he's not supposed to win. But he is...how old is he?
PC: He's 26.
NR: Yeah, he thinks like a 26 year old. He feels he's indestructible. I told him this, I said, "You have a trunk of weaponry and you have an army of guys coming up the stairs to get you. Your problem is you don't know if you want to shoot them with the M-16, the AR, the 9MM, the assault rifle, the sawed off shotgun or the M-4. By the time you figure out which one you're going to use, they are already up the stairs and in your shit. See, those two brothers in Europe got one weapon and it's an old shotgun. They sitting on the couch with that shotgun and when that door knob turns, they are shooting you with that shotgun." I told him that's the only difference. Our goal is to figure out when to use all of those weapons because he's going to need them all, but you just have to know when to use them. The Klitschkos utilize the hell out of that one gun they have. I could tell he didn't like the Klitschkos, so I kept talking about them in a positive light to see how he would react. I think this guy has the goods, man. I love the kid's mentality. And he is every bit of 6'6". I got downstairs to where him and Mike were and he stood up, I said, "Damn this kid is a legitimate 6'6"." And something else I told him, whether the Klitschkos are around or not, when he is ready for that level, our job is to make them realize they don't belong. See, Larry Holmes stuck around to try and show Mike Tyson it was still his time. Mike wasn't having that shit. When Mike hit Larry, it looked like someone cut a hole through the mat and yanked Larry through it. Mike Tyson let him know his time had come and gone and that's what my goal is with Badr. If they want to stick around, we either gotta let them see Badr fight and say, "Hey man, it's time for us to move on," or do what Mike did to Larry and show them it's time for them to move on.
Bouie Fisher used to always tell me in the gym, "Watch that door and eventually the right kid is going to walk through it." I asked him what he meant by that and he said, "One day, a kid is going to walk through that door and do whatever you tell him to do and be able to adjust to anything that you want him to adjust to." I remember when me and Freddie Roach was working together and Freddie told me when Manny Pacquiao walked through the door at Wild Card Gym, he said to himself, "That's who I built this gym for." Freddie was reluctant to work with Pacquiao at first because he knew there wasn't much entity at those lower weight classes, and Manny was a small dude. One day, Manny had no one to hold the mitts for him and asked Freddie to give him 2 rounds, and from that moment on, Freddie knew what he had. Badr Hari could be that type of kid.