Former Twitch streamer Ice Poseidon has admitted that depression caused him to take a year-long break from content creation after a series of controversies throughout his career.
However, the legendary streamer has returned to the internet, and plans to wow fans with his boxing debut tonight in Austin, Texas on Misfits Boxing's third X-Series event with DAZN. After being banned from Twitch in 2017, Ice Poseidon, whose real name is Paul Denino, battled with mental health struggles amid a snowball of controversies, and eventually completely quit streaming.
After slowly but surely resurfacing on social media, he has bulked up to make the light-heavyweight limit for his fight with Brandon Buckingham at the Moody Center on the undercard of a star-studded event promoted by YouTube star KSI. And the Florida native plans to impress fans with his new skillset against an experienced combat athlete who is also boxing for the first time.
"My career low was when I took a year off from streaming because I was depressed," he told Mirror Fighting in an exclusive chat. "That was pretty bad... It's either be healthy or be a live streamer, you can't do both. During the lower points of my career it was important to have a support system that's not the internet.
"The internet is really flaky and people switch on a f***ing dime on Twitter and s*** so you've got to have real people around you and that's what keeps you motivated. I've helped a lot of people, I definitely set a foundation that people are able to work on and I'm proud of that."
Issues with his fan community that bubbled over when a bomb threat was called in for a flight under his name caused him to be removed from Twitch, and he has never been far from further controversy since. He was involved in a cryptocurrency scheme gone wrong amongst other issues, but believes that at times people have been too quick to judgment for his indiscretions.
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"I think it's really subjective and I'm really biased, so I would say [people have been too harsh]," he continued. "But I don't really care that much, people's words on the internet don't really mean anything. I don't know who the people are, and I don't really care, all I focus on are people that are nice.
"I focus on my fans and people that are positive. If people are negative and someone says 'oh I don't like Ice Poseidon', I don't give a f***, who the f*** are you? I'll just block you, I don't care."
A former bodybuilder, Denino has now transformed himself for his first boxing fight, and believes he'll be able to outlast Buckingham, who faced a gruelling weight cut to get to 175lb yesterday. He comes from a fitness background within his family, which has kept him on track during boxing training.
"I'm very disciplined," he explained. "I've done fitness stuff my whole life besides when I was a live streamer, funny enough. Even live streaming takes a lot of discipline to keep streaming for eight-nine hours, sometimes I don't want to f***ing stream nine hours a day, I've done a lot of challenges and stuff. I'm just built for this, when I really feel like giving up, that's when the true character comes out and you build yourself."
