Today we are going back to when Badr Hari was a scrawny 18 year old still training with Thom Harinck, and Alexey Ignashov was a nightmare opponent for any heavyweight fighter. This was a big step up in competition for Badr considering he hadn’t really fought any big names yet, he took the fight on only a few days notice and Ignashov had already fought and beat pretty much everyone including Peter Aerts, Remy Bonjasky, and Daniel Ghita.
This fight took place on It’s Showtime 2003 Amsterdamn in front of Badr’s home crowd, and to be honest for an 18 year old fighting a much bigger, more experienced and better opponent he was doing okay, until 2:55 seconds into the 3rd round when Iggy drove a straight right into Hari’s sternum which he couldn’t recover from. After the fight was called off Ignashov rushes over and helps Badr up, rubs his chest for him and shows him how to get his breath back, Iggy is always such a class act. Badr Hari avenged this loss twice later in his career once in Yokohama, Japan in 2010, and once in Moscow, Russia in 2013, but he was still never able to finish Ignashov even when Iggy was well past his prime.
