Ryan Reber clashes with Travis Thompson at BKFC 47 on July 14th.
The fistic fireworks broadcast on the Bare Knuckle TV app and Fite TV with the pugilistic proceedings emanate from Jenkins Arena in Lakeland, Florida.
Reber spoke to Dylan Bowker of Bare Knuckle News before this bout. Excerpts from the chat are below.
Ryan Reber
You’re in the top five and are fighting the number two-ranked BKFC bantamweight here. Are you looking at this one as a title eliminator?
“Yeah, absolutely. That’s what they’re telling me, that’s what my manager is telling me. So that’s what we’re riding it as. A win here would be huge and it would catapult me in that number two spot. I want to think that Jarod Grant is going to have him a fight in August. I’m not sure against who but I’m sure I would beat the winner out of those two as everything goes my way come the fourteenth.”
Do you feel like things are kind of wide open in the division now as far as who the next contender for the BKFC bantamweight title could be?
“Oh yeah. I mean it’s also gonna depend on what Reggie’s gonna do. Is Reggie (Barnett Jr) gonna stay or is Reggie gonna drop? You know what I mean because that would be a great fight for me too if Reggie stays. I would look forward to something like that. So either way, man, not to say that I’m looking past Travis Thompson. I’m gonna have my hands full but I know what I’m doing. I know how hard I’m training, I know what it takes to do this. I’m putting all the things in order to be successful in this fight, so.”
BKFC
Thompson is ranked well in the weight category and has been fighting in bare-knuckle since BKFC 1. What are your thoughts on his resume and better stylistic attributes in this sport?
“As far as Travis Thompson goes, I personally feel all the pressure’s on him. He’s the guy with more experience, he’s the guy who’s number two. I’m coming for his spot. Likewise, he’s not going to want me to take his spot. So he’s going to try to stop me from doing that. But I know who he trains with down here. He trains close to my camp in St Petersburg, Florida. We actually did train together last camp a little bit. So I know a little bit of what he’s about and he knows a little bit of what I’m about.”
“We didn’t really get any sparring in because I believe he thought that we could possibly be opponents down the road. At first it was like oh we’re boys, we’re never gonna fight. To as soon as he left hey, man, I can get us a fight. I’m just like bro at the end of the day friends or not, I’m not in this **** for friends. I’m in this **** for myself.”
Ryan Reber continued, “So if we got to fight, it is what it is, bro. Set that **** up and we’ll see what happens. Obviously, there was talks and that’s what popped up, man. Come the fourteenth, I look to put on a show and handle business, man.”
BKFC 47
How do you go about not letting Thompson’s tenure and profile in the sport get in your head leading into this fight?
“Nah, I mean I’m really not, man. I mean yeah he’s got the experience but also styles make fights. He’s never fought anybody as big as I have. I mean you go back and you look at his wins, who those guys were, not very impressive. The guys that he lost to were very impressive. So I’ll give him that. But at the end of the day, he’s fighting smaller guys. He’s got a big opponent on his hands. They try to downplay me like oh, well he’s small. I’m not small. I put on ten pounds of muscle this time around too.”
“To make sure that I’m not small. So I used to walk around at probably like ’43, ’42. Now I was walking around almost towards 150. So I made sure that come the fourteenth I’m not that same skinny ass little Ryan (laughs) that you guys (have) seen in the previous fights. I wanted to put on a little bit more muscle, I wanted to work on my footwork. There was a couple other things that I had to work on and get down. Like I said, man, I’m putting in the work.”
“So the thing with Travis is, I don’t know what he was doing in Philly but I know he comes down here to train for fights. In my opinion, you can’t just be an on-call fighter. You’re not just somebody who oh, I’ve got a fight, now it’s time to get into shape. Because I’ve heard through the grapevine he’s very heavy or was very heavy. I don’t know what he’s getting down to now nor do I care but I know that that’s going to play a big factor.”
Ryan Reber vs Travis Thompson
Ryan Reber continued, “It does, no matter your heart, no matter any of that *****. There’s things that you must do. There’s universal laws that I feel you must abide by in order to be successful. I don’t really see that he’s doing those things. He took a little too much time with the contract dispute. Instead of being like well I know I want to fight and I know that I want this to go down. So instead of sitting around and waiting for the contract to get handled, I should get my *** into training camp.”
“Put forth my best effort and then when they renegotiate or whatever, at least I’m ready. But he got into training camp like two and a half weeks ago. It took me like honestly eight weeks to get into top-notch shape. Just a couple weeks ago I was really feeling it to where I could go ten minutes, move my feet, move my head, and move my hands nonstop. That’s the goal I mean even today, I’m putting in just crazy, crazy amounts of work.”
