Remember that Irish ‘professional’ boxer who took on an entire streets-worth of Turkish shopkeepers and won?
Well his identity has been revealed. The one-man army is a Kuwait-born Irish national called Mohammed Fadel Dobbous, and he’s given an interview to a Turkish TV show.
He told Turkey’s Show TV that he was ‘shocked’ that the whole thing had escalated so quickly, after he spilled the water bottles out the fridge. He tried to apologise to the shopkeeper but he wasn’t having any of it.
He said:
I wasn’t drunk, I don’t drink. When the water fell on the ground I went to apologise to the shop owners, but they attacked me with sticks.
He also admitted that he wasn’t a professional boxer, he was just training, and that he didn’t do proper fights ‘unless necessary’. I guess this was one of those times when a proper fight was definitely necessary.
He’s still in Istanbul, receiving ‘consular assistance’ as he comes to terms with his new found fame, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told The Independent.
Sources at the Irish consulate have called it a ‘fun incident’, and Mr Dobbous has said he’s only annoyed that the Turkish men wouldn’t “fight like men… with their bare hands.”
The amateur boxer wore a sling during the interview on Turkish TV, and says he’s broken his hand, injured his shoulder and was stabbed in the back during the brawl.
In case you missed it the first time, here’s that footage again:
The incident hasn’t put him off returning to Istanbul, however, and when he was asked if he was scared at any time he said: “No, no I wasn’t.”
What a beast.
