Chris Barnett’s black-belt mothers and fathers on spotlight-reel knockout: ‘Literally, my mother yelled at me’

Chris Barnett, aka “Beastboy,” aka “Huggy Bear,” arrives from a relatives of taekwondo practitioners. Mother and father are black belts, like he is. His daughter’s rank is brown, and his son’s is orange.

All of this is to say that when he works by using a taekwondo system, how he does it and what it’s called actually issues. When he knocked out his first UFC opponent this previous Saturday at UFC 268, the people had notes.

“Literally, my mother yelled at me when I got dwelling,” Barnett reported Monday on The MMA Hour. “She was like, ‘Why do they preserve contacting it a wheel kick? Why do they maintain contacting it a twister? It’s a spinning hook-kick. I was like, ‘I’m sorry.’”

The cause it was a hook kick, Barnett discussed, is since of the bend in his leg that allowed his heel to get to the back again of Gian Villante’s head, knocking him foolish and touching off one particular of the year’s most hilarious publish-acquire celebrations in the octagon.

The spinning-hook kick gained Barnett an further $50,000 for “Performance of the Night time.”

Barnett’s father utilised to corner him for fights, but a latest stroke left him not able to vacation and not ready to talk as effectively as in advance of. That nonetheless did not hold him from weighing in on his son’s ending move.

“When I still left, I was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to MSG to fight,’” Barnett claimed. “And [he said], ‘You require to do you.’ He’s however one of my largest critics, which is great, simply because he was mad at me that I place my hand down for the spinning hook kick.

“He was like, ‘If you would have completed it clear, it would have been down, but excellent knockout, I guess.’ … He’s not the exact, but it is nonetheless there, particularly with me. To be in a position to show him and be in a position chat to him about it right before, I know, deep down within, he was like, ‘Yes.’ But outside, it’s like, ‘So, here’s what you have obtained to clean up.’ Even now dad at the end of the working day.”

Barnett necessary a thing to deliver him down immediately after likely from MMA journeyman to viral octagon star overnight. Heading into the Madison Square Back garden celebration, he had 48,000 followers on Instagram, and he preferred to reply to unique followers who impressed him to fight far better. Then he woke up on Sunday, and there were a tidal wave of messages waiting around.

“Man, matters just ain’t the identical for gangsters,” he mentioned. “It’s wild. It is significantly adjusted. I practically received 100,000 followers overnight. I was seeking to preserve up with my Instagram, and I’m at the place now where I’m all set to delete all of it. I simply cannot retain up with anything.”

It was a heck of a way to get started successful in the UFC, and yet Barnett is decided not to get much too forward of himself. He is 22-7 as a experienced, with stints in fight promotions significant and small all around the world. In the world’s most important just one, nevertheless, he is 1-1.

“My total point is, I actually come to feel like I have a large benefit,” he said. “I sense like somebody was capable to hit the reset button on myself, but I was ready to carry the understanding in advance of I hit the reset button. I experience like ‘Ultron’ – they try out to get rid of me, but I even now have what you experimented with to get rid of me with correct in this article. With what I’m doing now, I’m in fact education like a fighter. I really do not want to just take away from just about anything that I have performed in the past with any individual else, but I have never properly trained like an real fighter. Now, I’m training like an true fighter, and the success are demonstrating.”