Julio Tanori Thought Stephen A. Smith Hematoma Clip “Was Fake”
Julio Tanori captured the BYB lightweight championship over Mark Irwin via majority decision. This fight of the year contender happened at BYB 22: Rocky Mountain Brawl on December 2nd.
Tanori appeared on episode 51 of Bare Knuckle Radio following the victory. Excerpts from our chat are below.
Julio Tanori
Definitely going to talk about certain things related to the BYB 22 fight itself. But I guess I’m just curious to get your reactions if you saw any of the Stephen A. Smith video of him talking about the hematoma on Irwin and if bare-knuckle should be around. It seemed like it caused a bit of a kerfuffle there. Did you notice Stephen A. Smith’s commentary on your fight after the fact or not so much?
Julio Tanori said, “Yes, sir. I actually thought it was fake (laughs). When somebody sent me the video, I thought it was like an edited version or something cuz that’s weird. Cuz, I know; well, I don’t really know who Stephen A. Smith is, but I’ve seen him around and he’s like in the social medias. So, when I (had) seen myself and Stephen A. Smith, it was like what? It was a little weird but after I got it confirmed then I thought that was pretty cool (laughs), shoot.”
BYB 22
One of the big aspects of this fight was really the reaction to it, in a lot of ways. I mean a lot of understandable praise heaped on it. I mentioned earlier in the conversation there are a lot of people who view your Mark Irwin fight as the best bare-knuckle fight of the year. If not the most entertaining of the calendar year regardless of combat sport.
What are your thoughts on that reception and everything like that? Is that something in the heat of the battle that you’re meaningfully aware of right in the body of the fight? Or are you more aware of how well the fight went over after the fact and how people are discussing it?
Julio Tanori stated, “Yeah. Yes, sir. At the battle in the moment, there’s not much you remember cuz I’m also getting hit as well. So, it’s like I just know we’re going back and forth, right, but yeah. Plus, I was exhausted because of the elevation. So that; my main focus was on staying with air, with oxygen (laughs). So, I didn’t really think of it much. But after the fight now that I see all the videos and everything, all the commotion, well now I know like how it went down and everything. But in the moment, it’s hard. It’s hard to really know.”
