Robin Safar hungry for big names and belts at cruiserweight

Cruiserweight contender Robin Safar has not yet watched back his victory over Yamil Peralta, but he is expecting the worst when he does.

Safar climbed off the floor for the first time in his life to win a tight decision on May 22, but the victory has left him poised near the top of the 200lbs ranks.

He is No. 2 with the WBO, No. 4 with the WBC, No. 13 with the WBA and sits at No. 15 in the IBF ratings.

“It was not my best performance, but I got the victory, it’s all that matters,” he told BoxingScene. “I won basically on will and determination. That was it, not skills. I didn’t show no skills and a lot of other things – a lot of other things. Everything had to do with me. It hadn’t anything to do with him, to be honest. He was exactly what I thought he was, and he did exactly what he was supposed to do, and I thought he was going to do. It was just that my body didn’t want to do what I wanted to do, if that makes sense.”

Asked about the second-round knockdown, Safar explained: “When it happened, I was kind of embarrassed, to be honest. Damn, like, never been dropped, you know? So I was like, ‘Fuck, yo. Not here.’ And I got into my mind a little bit. I got a little irritated and mad, but then I started thinking, I said I can’t get emotional, you know? So then I ended up, instead of being more aggressive and mad, basically, I started calming down too much, and then I started getting more cautious. I started thinking more about what he was going to do than what I had to do, right after it happened. And then, after like the fourth or fifth, then I started just doing what I was supposed to do. But then I also felt like my body didn’t want to do what I wanted to do. It didn’t listen to me.”

Safar felt he should have let his hands go more often and used his jab more, but he was hindered by a problem with his left shoulder, though he didn’t want to use that as an excuse. He even went as far as to call it his worst night in the ring, amateur or pro.

“But I still got the victory through a C-minus performance,” he added.

There is an upside, however, and that is that he now feels it will mark him as easy prey for those who might not have previously wanted to entertain him.

“Everybody’s gonna think, ‘Yo, if that dude dropped him, then I can drop him.’ I don’t care about that. Styles make fights. In the end, it all matters who you’re fighting, when you’re fighting them, and how you’re feeling that day when you wake up, so it could also be a blessing in disguise.”

Safar is now 20-0 (13 KOs) and wants to be fighting again sooner rather than later. He’s targeting a September return but is already back in the gym after a vacation to Japan.

He wants the big names, and would like to fight either of the stars from the Zuffa Boxing event in Bournemouth that saw Chris Billam-Smith and Ryan Rozicki go to war.

“It was definitely an entertaining fight, for sure,” said Safar. “I liked to watch it. And I got more props for Ryan than I did before, for sure. He’s a warrior. Skill-wise, I didn’t see anything special, but heart-wise and balls, I saw a lot. But that’s just a part of boxing, you know? I would love to fight Chris Billam-Smith. I would love to fight Ryan Rozicki, too. I want to fight everybody in the division. Everybody. It don’t really matter who I’m fighting. It’s just got to be a name or it’s got to be a title. That’s just it. That’s what I’m thinking right now. A hundred percent. Jai Opetaia, David Benavidez, Noel Mikaelian, those are the people I want… the people that are with the belts and the resumes, you know? So obviously those are the people that I want, but then I want everybody else. Me and Rozicki were supposed to fight.”

Safar, who lives in Las Vegas but was born in Sweden, revealed that he had spoken to the teams of both Billam-Smith and Rozicki before the two cruiserweights signed for Zuffa Boxing and fought one another.

Safar felt he was particularly close to a fight with the Canadian, and so fired off a direct message on social media when he learned that Rozicki was going elsewhere.

“I was supposed to fight him,” Safar said. “We had already agreed to fight. Everything was already a done deal, but the contract wasn’t signed. So then, the day of the contract being signed from my side, the day after they announced that he signed with Zuffa. And then when he signed with Zuffa, I even DM’d him. I said, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why did you do this?’ It kind of bothered me because I wanted to fight Ryan Rozicki and I had already planned to fight him.”

Instead, Safar had a very different opponent in Peralta.

“I was in my feelings when I wrote him,” Safar added. “So it wasn’t a gentle approach.”

Safar is with Golden Boy and remains uncertain about what direction the landscape of the sport will go with fighters in his weight class being signed with Zuffa. He points to Conor Benn being able to fight the likes of Regis Prograis and Ryan Garcia as signs that he could still fight Zuffa signees like Opetaia, Rozicki, or Billam-Smith.

“I would love to fight Ryan, I want to fight Ryan bad. I want to fight Chris bad,” he added. “Because I know what I’ll be able to do against a guy like them, a come-forward type dude.

“That’s all I’m looking for. Because if you think about it, everybody that I fought, they back up. Everybody that I’m fighting is backing up. There’s nobody that stands there with me. But I know those two got the style that they don’t really give a fuck. I’m going to get knocked out or you get knocked out. And that’s also going to bring the entertainment to the fans.”