Artem Lobov will be taking on Jason Knight on April 6 in both fighters’ Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) debuts, but Artem Lobov already has another opponent in mind, the talkative Paulie Malignaggi, who is reportedly eyeing a fight with Lobov should Lobov get past Knight. Indeed, Artem Lobov is hopeful that Malignaggi will be watching, as he says it will be a preview of what awaits Malignaggi: (transcript via BJPenn.com)
“April 6th, please tune in and see for yourself, and treat this as a little preview for what I have in store for Paulie Malignaggi,” Lobov told BJPenn.com Radio. This is fight [with Knight], I will burst through this guy, literally. Choo Choo motherf***er. The Siberian Express is on its way. So I will burst through this guy April 6th, and then down the line I want Paulie Malignaggi. This is the fight that I’m really after.”
The history between Malignaggi and close friend and training partner of Artem Lobov, Conor McGregor, is no secret at this point, but never in a million years did Lobov expect Malignaggi to actually step into the world of BKFC andbe in line for a potential fight against him:
“Honestly, at first I couldn’t believe it,” Lobov said of a potential Malignaggi fight. “I could not believe my luck. I thought I was never gonna get that guy into the ring. I knew he needed money, but I thought he was after proper, big, big pay days, like the Conor fight, which he tried to make happen for many, many years.
“Let’s be honest, there’s no chance of that fight happening. He’s not on the level of Conor. So I thought this guy was just gonna talk and yap around and never really step into the ring. I thought he was done, but I was wrong. Money talks. and we all need to eat. Paulie’s broke, otherwise he wouldn’t be commentating every week for a couple of hundred bucks.
“So he’s back,” Lobov continued. “He’s back in the ring and trust me, this is not the thing he wants to do.
Do you believe we will get to see Artem Lobov vs. Paulie Malignaggi in a BKFC ring?
