Mark Haskins discusses what has changed about him since his last Progress World Title challenge.
While speaking to Fightful's Corey Brennan in a recent interview, Haskins was asked what has changed since his last Progress World Title challenge in 2018. Haskins would explain how he had to go away for a while and improve himself while the pandemic was happening.
"Well, I'll tell you one of the big things that has changed is that Walter is no longer as fat as he was in that match. I was watching it back and thinking, damn, that's a completely different Walter to the Gunther we know now. Watching myself as well, I couldn't help but feel, I was like, damn, I'm so good at wrestling, right? Like I was genuinely blown away. Sometimes I forget how genuinely great I am. But all I could say is that I am so far superior to that now. I used to have a giant ego, but I am so much better than that now. The thing is, is that nowadays, you know, this is the thing is when we went into the pandemic, right, I look back at my career and I saw so many areas where I felt like I had let myself down, where I felt like I had let fear override, making a better decision. I was ruled by fear and I had an unhealthy relationship with fear. Now, one thing that Kid Lykos did say recently, which I hate to agree with him on, but it was a fair point, is that he said that, you know, during a pandemic and afterwards, I became irrelevant. I would say, you know what, fair point. I think I probably did because while everybody else was trying to remain relevant by doing stupid TikTok dances online and by doing stupid social media posts, I disappeared. The reason why I disappeared is because I needed to go away and I needed to confront the demons that lived within me, right? I literally went into the pit of my soul and returned with the scalps of my demons. because I realized that I had an unhealthy relationship with fear. So I had to conquer fear. I had to put myself in positions and situations that made me feel greatly uncomfortable so I could then face it and adapt it. That's exactly what happened. I was doing things that people would not even dream of doing, which is why I find it nothing but absolutely disrespectful for some little punk like Lycos to say that he would run through me. Bitch, he can't fucking run. Like he doesn't even run. He can't even get up off the couch. Like to say that you would run from me, dude, let me put things into perspective for you. One day I woke up and I said, you know what? I'm going to be a fucking beast today. So I threw on a 10 kilo weight sack and I ran over the Malvern Hills. I ran eight kilometers there. I think eight kilometers back. Every five minutes I stopped to do 50 reps of an exercise and 10 burpees in the middle of a fucking storm. While everybody else is inside playing on TikTok or whatever the fuck it is, I'm out there busting my ass, literally physically destroying myself, doing things like going for a run at 3 a.m. in the morning, right? In the middle of a forest or by yourself. There's nobody else out there doing that, right? I'm the only person out there. I can tell you this because when you're up a hill in the middle of the night, you don't see anybody. You don't see anybody walking. You see no one. Yet I'm the one out there wearing a weight vest, sprinting up a hill, right? So I realized that I had let myself down and I needed to keep things like my cardio up. I needed to come back an absolute beast. I needed to change what was going on in here. Over the last few years, I have done exactly that. I am more of a monster and more of a beast than I have ever been. Lykos is going to find that out for himself on Super Strong Style 16."
To read more on Lykos' comments on Haskins ahead of their world title bout, you can find them here.
For the full interview with Haskins, you can find it above.
