Sasha Palatnikov does battle with Phil Hawes at DBX 2 on June 14th and the former appeared on Bowks Talking Bouts to cover several subjects ahead of his foray into the world of Dirty Boxing Championship. After referencing a training photo from years ago with Chris Curtis at Syndicate MMA, who beat Phil Hawes in the UFC, and describing that this is the kind of pedigreed opponent who is right in the wheelhouse of adversaries that he looks for, Sasha Palatnikov said,
“For sure. I’ve actually crossed paths with him before. He’s come to Vegas and he; I’ve never trained with him but he’s been in the cage with a couple guys that you mentioned, Sean Strickland, Chris Curtis. At that time, he’s a 85er. At that time, I was a 170. So we just unfortunately never really; we had the same management at the time as well with Ruby. So I’m not sure why we never actually trained together. But yeah I mean, the homie Chris, he got the win over him.”
“We have had some conversations about him and and what he brings and what he does. Yeah, he’s [Hawes’] a talented guy. He’s strong. he’s powerful. I think he hasn’t really been competitive for quite a while if I’m not mistaken. I think his last fight, I could be wrong, but I think his last fight was in the UFC and that was a few years back. After that, I think I’ve seen him in like Dillon Danis’ corner against Logan Paul [laughs].”
Sasha Palatnikov doesn’t want to pull a Patchy Mix but has eyes on big DBX names
Sasha Palatnikov continued,
“If that’s like any indication of what he’s been up to. Seems like he’s been boxing but yeah to what extent, with who, what kind of training, I’m not sure. But yeah, this is again one of those opportunities. I’m a fighter, I don’t care who the opponent is. I was intrigued by the name of course. I do prefer to fight someone that has a name and people know. So that’s definitely a good spot to be in and like I said hope that I can yeah; I could quickly smash this guy and then hopefully get an opportunity to fight someone else.”
“I have some; I might be crazy but I have some names and I have some; I’m not going to talk about them now because I don’t want to pull a Patchy [Mix] or anything like that because you know anything can happen in the fight game. But yeah, maybe afterwards you can or you’ll see after the fight what are some of the names that I’m interested in, in Dirty Boxing. Because yeah, I’m a bit crazy but I also think I can do a lot in that rule set and I think I can bring some excitement to it.”
