YouTube star Matt Watson has blamed over-training ahead of his boxing debut for his 22 second loss to 41-year-old Nathan 'Dad' Barnatt.
The social media star is one half of comedy duo Super Mega, and had worked with a boxing coach for months heading into the fight against his rival, who goes by the nickname 'Dad'. But it took a record-breaking time of less than half-a-minute for the 26-year-old to be stopped in his first fight.
And in his first podcast since the fight, Watson explained that he suffered a lower back injury during training that left him with shooting pains, which he expects to get a diagnosis for in the coming days. He argues that the injury may have played a part in his poor showing, although he insists that he will fight again.
"I got that injury and here's the thing, it's because I over-trained in terms of physical fitness," Watson said in an episode of the Super Mega podcast. "I put more work into physical fitness than actual boxing training. Think about all the impact exercises I was doing. I was doing a s*** ton of burpees and then I was doing these squat jumps with a medicine ball where you're running forwards and backwards.
"I was jogging and on top of that, when my back started to hurt my trainer was like 'you need to stretch out your lower back, that's why it hurts'. Now looking back, those lower back stretches would have been good if it was anything but sciatic pain. It aggravated the problem and made it worse, so ultimately for about a week I was limping.
"I remember being like 'don't tell them how bad it is' because I wanted to f***ing fight, I'd been training so long for this. I f***ing did, I stepped into the ring and I fought. And with the adrenaline and everything, none of that made an appearance in terms of what I could notice."
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Watson admits that fighting with Barnatt, who is known for being in great shape due to his dancing background, was perhaps a poor match-up, and he expected to lose going into the bout. But he will look to organise a fairer match-up should he return to the ring, although he may sit out the next iteration of the Creator Clash.
"That was fun, and I would like to do it again," Watson added. "I want to try and get a more fair match-up and train much harder next time. I offered it to Lucas Cruikshank, you guys know Fred.
"He did get back to me, he said no, politely turned it down, but when he's in Los Angeles next we're going to hang out... Then I challenged Ian from Smosh, because I was like 'that might be a good match-up', he also said no."
