Deji’s former boxing coach has accused the YouTuber of ‘lying’ about his training in a new YouTube video, after he lost to Alex Wassabi in a fight in March.
YouTuber Deji Olatunji is just one of the many content creators online who have joined the likes of Jake and Logan Paul in trying their hand at boxing, though some have certainly been more successful than others.
Deji has yet to pick up a win in the ring, previously losing to Jake Paul and Vinnie Hacker, and then to Alex Wassabi at the UK vs USA bout back in March.
On April 27, the YouTuber’s former coach Solomon uploaded a video titled ‘Deji LIED About his Training **Former Coach Exposes The Truth**’ in which he described what happened behind the scenes of the lead-up to the fight.
He explained that the training was “sporadic” at the beginning, due to Deji being ill in December, but in January: “It started to pick up a little bit, [but] it was still a bit sporadic for me. There was times when I did say to Deji like, we need to pick up the pace. Admittedly we had quite a long camp, and he did come to myself underweight, which was impressive. But I knew that he needed to pick the intensity up with the training.
“It was quite tough because he had quite a lot of commitments outside of boxing, which is understandable, but when you have a fight coming on, you need to be fully committed in my opinion. Camp really didn’t get going. There was a number of occasions where I had to kind of use different approaches, but I tried explaining to him that with boxing you’ve got to take it seriously.
“His life is in my hands as a coach, like, I must put him through the full paces. It didn’t seem like it was paying off. After that there was points where I did say to him that, ‘Deji, if it carries on this way then I will not be your coach going into fight week,'” he continued.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
In response to Deji’s claims that training was “too easy,” his former coach responded that: “For me, he was never able to be pushed. A person is only gonna do what they wanna do. You can’t really force anyone to do anything.”
Solomon also disputed Deji’s claims that he only had one sparring partner, and released some footage of some of the YouTuber’s sparring to prove that the partners weren’t “easy” fights.
“Quite clearly he was finding it hard in that sparring session, unlike how he has stated in that face-off against Alex, that it wasn’t hard. It was hard,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with tough sparring, it should be harder than the fight, but for Deji to say it was easy quite clearly is another lie, on top of the lie of me not pushing him, because I know that I push my fighters.”
The coach later added: “I think his performance kind of showed overall the kind of effort he has put into training camp, if I’m totally honest with you.”
Although Deji indicated that he would retire from the sport if he lost his third fight, he has since revealed that he plans to carry on boxing.