Conor McGregor has praised his friend and teammate Artem Lobov after his bare knuckle boxing victory over Jason Knight on Saturday night, while also taking a verbal jab at his rival Paulie Malignaggi, who appears to be next in line for a fight with ‘The Russian Hammer.’
“What an animal!” McGregor said of Lobov on Twitter. “Proud of you @RusHammerMMA! Amazing fight Paulie’s nice and quiet all of a sudden and that’s not like him haha We want a new contract for the @RusHammerMMA for this next bout! It has been earned and now deserved! What a great showing @Jasonthekid23. Big respect!”
Naturally Malignaggi wasn’t going to take that jibe without responding.
“First off nothing needs to be said cause I slapped him already,” Malignaggi responded. “Though I must admit, he does have the balls you clearly never had 🤷🏻♂ see you in June @RusHammerMMA.”
Despite his recent altercation with Lobov and long-time bad blood with McGregor’s camp in general, Malignaggi did however have positive words to say about Lobov’s fight.
“Definitely it was a fight that people are going to remember it,” Malignaggi said on his ‘From Brookyln To The World’ podcast. “Like I say, I think (Bare Knuckle FC promotor) Dave Feldman got all he could ask for out of the fight, you know. Tremendous, tremendous action – violent, bloody.”
Nevertheless, he couldn’t resist also taking another pop at McGregor.
“There’s a mismatch there. Conor got all the skills and Artem got all of the balls and Conor got none of them, you know?”
Malignaggi is now set to fight Lobov in June and despite the violence he witnessed on Saturday night he’s not concerned about the prospect of facing Lobov in the ring.
“I got to be honest, I wasn’t that impressed skill wise. It wasn’t like anything that was going to scare me, you know what I’m saying? It wasn’t like I saw all the blood and thought, ‘oh my goodness, what am I getting myself into. I don’t see myself doing that to myself. I see myself doing that to Artem. I see myself doing it worse to Artem. It’s actually going to be brutal what I’ll do to Artem.”
