Speaker 1: Well, it's my pleasure to welcome to our podcast. This
week it's the former WBC Junior lightweight champ O' Shaky
Foster and O'shacky Welcome to the show. Thank you so
much for doing this. We'll talk about your very significant
rematch coming.
Speaker 2: Up, and thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Bro. You bet all right. We'll let the folks know
you have a rematch with Robson Kosasao, who came away
with a very controversial decision against you a few months
ago to take your title in the defense, and now
you got the order for the immediate rematch. You guys
are both with top rank. They were to put that
fight together, I think pretty easily, it seemed to me anyway.
You guys will get it on once again November two.
It's the main event of the Top Rank ESPN Plus
card at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York.
Not far from where I grew up as a matter
of fact. So the first question I got to start
with you, Oshaky, is this when you fought him the
first time in July, you were making your third title defense.
You had looked good in your dramatic victory against Hernandez
you had defeated Abraham Nova seemed to be on a
very good role. You guys were the co feature that
night in Newark, New Jersey, when Chakorus Stevenson was in
the main event against Ardam Hartunian. You lost a split
decision and let the folks know to refresh your memory.
One judge had you winning one sixteen to one twelve. Uh,
And the two other judges had concerts I winning one
sixteen to one twelve and one fifteen to one thirteen.
My question is, when they're reading the squarecards, did you
feel like I got this in the bag and were
you surprised when that was said it was going to
be a split verdict.
Speaker 2: Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was telling my coaches right after the bell round
that you know, I made it look easy and that
you know, I showed the world that you know, I
can box and I can make it look easy if
I want to. So yeah, when the score cards came out,
it was like I kind of talked, I don't know,
I kind of felt, I don't know, I was I
don't know. I couldn't understand it because I was literally
just telling them like, man, this was, you know, good night,
easy work, Like woo woo, and then we lose the fight,
and it's like, yeah, it was crazy, man, crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't attend the fight in person that time,
but I watched it like so many other boxing fans
and wrote about it afterwards. And when I watched fights
like that, I scored them on paper or in my
computer as I'm watching, And I scored the fight for
you one eighteen to one ten. I thought maybe there
was maybe one round, maybe two that I could have
given the other way, so you still would have, at
least in my mind, one eight rounds to four. So
just how shocked were you in when it happened. I
know you said you thought you won easily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was unbelievable for me. I just it didn't
feel real.
Speaker 2: I ain't gonna lie. I didn't feel real.
Speaker 3: I kind of That's why I was just kind of
pacing around the ring. I was trying to understand, like like,
you know where it came from, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: It just feel man, just feel crazy.
Speaker 1: Well, I know you you wanted a rematch, obviously that
was something that you called for right away. Uh has
it turned out to WBC? Uh? They ordered the immediate
rematch and here you go, you've got it. Uh, But
before that happened, I know you wanted it, But were
you a little surprised or or how how much did
you think that you would actually get them to order it.
Speaker 3: I felt pretty good about the de w. I felt
pretty good about them ordering it. Not gonna lie, I
didn't have no.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I felt I felt there was so too much backlash,
too much too much going on around the fight, that
it had to be a rematch.
Speaker 2: I was gonna put a stand on the sport.
Speaker 3: But the only thing I didn't know if if they
was gonna try to run from the rematch.
Speaker 2: If Mauricio didn't you're talking about, Yeah, if he didn't.
Speaker 3: Make it like force the rematch, I'm sure they would
have probably ran from the rematch.
Speaker 1: So when you wall put like that, since the fight happened,
have you gone back and rewatch it?
Speaker 2: I did once?
Speaker 1: Okay, So what do you see when you rewatch it?
Do you see like how it's plausible that they could
give him the scores that he could at least two
of the judges have him winning the fight.
Speaker 3: Nah, I seen him win in two rounds.
Speaker 2: I give him two rounds.
Speaker 3: I know it was around the fourth and probably somewhere
around the later round, but not not at all. I
thought it was a clean wash in the ring. And
when I watched it, yeah, the most I could give
him was two rounds.
Speaker 1: So nothing that he gave you trouble with that you
could have seen that maybe somebody else was like, Okay,
he's doing very well in this particular facet of the fight,
so therefore, maybe he can win some more rounds. Anything,
anything you give you trouble with.
Speaker 3: No, not really, I could have counted more, uh, you know,
stuff like that, but nah.
Speaker 1: Not So the one thing that I see when I
look at it, so I don't like live and die.
Let's say, by the CompuBox numbers, I know that they
do provide a guide to the fight. So when I
look at it, I see and these numbers are very stark.
You know, if you've ever taken a look at what
the numbers from your fight were, is that you threw
way fewer punches than he did, by by quite a bit,
like well over one hundred punches, almost a hundred, like
almost two hundred punches less than he did, but you
land you were credited with landing like forty more punches
than he was. So you're landing more, but you're not
nearly as busy. But he's throwing way more but landing
a lot less. In fact, he landed at a historically
poor amount, only eleven percent of his punches. But the
reason I'm saying this is because some judges might look
and be swayed by the activity, and another judge may
be swayed by the fact that you were landing more punches,
even if you know neither one of you were throwing
particularly devastating punches landing them anyway. So that leads me
to this, do you think that part of going into
the rematch that you need to at least ratchet up
your activity level in terms of your punch output to
make sure that that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 3: We ain't giving away no game plans, but I plan on.
Speaker 2: I plan on.
Speaker 3: I know what I need to do. I understand what
I need to do. Definitely was easy, no matter how
we judge seeing it, they should have seen it as
a unanimous decision, so I shouldn't have to go in
there and change everything up, but I would turn it up.
Speaker 2: It's okay, I mean, I understand what I need to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, when I said I'm not talking
about some kind of like radical change, I just mean
being sort of cognizant of the fact that I might
need to, like maybe be a little bit more aggressive,
maybe throw a few more punches, because we've seen you
do that. We saw that in the Hernandez fight for example.
It's not like you're not capable of doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, you're right.
Speaker 3: I mean it's that's that's basically what it is.
Speaker 2: You know, we gotta turn it up.
Speaker 1: So and what would it mean to you to regain
the title? I mean, you know, I've talked to lots
of fighters on my day, and it's one thing. You know,
they win the title and uh you know they always
talk about it. You know, getting it's one thing, but
keeping it's tougher. Uh And then if they lose it
and get it back again, they talk about how sweet
it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, it's it's it's gonna be. I don't know
I'm gonna feel i'mna feel great, I'm I'm I'm real anxious,
I'm excited and uh man, when that when that time come,
I think I'm having I'm gonna have more emotions than
I did for the first go around.
Speaker 1: Well, I see a smile, and I can tell you're
like excited about it when you when you really pumped
up for it. Yeah, you guys had a pretty bad
head butt there in the ninth round of the fight.
I left you guys both with cuts. It seemed to
me that yours was a bit worse than his. Uh,
you kind of have to in the back of your
mind make sure that you are worry about making sure
the head don't get involved again.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And kind of when that happened, it was kind
of my fault too, the way I threw the right
hand and the way he like, I kind of the
right hand and I pulled, but I kind of leaned
over to the left a little bit, So that's what
kind of made it. So, Yeah, I'm gonna be I'm
definitely gonna be mindful of his head because that was
kind of Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is that it's all healed up though, No issues there
going into this fight with the cut?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, no issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you guess say, like you guys are waiting
a year to do the remat It's been like what
four months or so since the last fight, since July,
so it's not a long hasn't been a long wait,
I guess yeah. You know, I've always been interested in
your backstory. I've heard him talk about it on on
on the broadcast in the past. I've written a little
bit about it in the in the past about how
you know you got in some trouble as a kid
you were in jail. Uh, you had been a really
good amateur boxer, and and and I guess the way
the story goes that I heard you tell me if
I'm wrong here, that at some point, you know, while
you're doing your time, uh, you were watching Terrence Crawford fight,
and we're inspired by watching a Terrence Crawford fight. And
as the story goes, Oshaki Foster said, you know what,
when I'm out of here, which you know, I guess
you didn't have a long period of time left to do, uh,
that you were gonna try to turn your life around
and dedicate yourself to boxing, seeing what what what Terrence
Carford had done. Can you, uh go a little bit
more into that story of what happened and what fight
were you watching? And like I didn't know that you
could watch like HBO fights in jail.
Speaker 3: Oh, actually it was it was. So I was it's
like the blocks. It's like a twelve man unit and
there no no, no, no guards in there.
Speaker 2: They come they come visit like every hour or two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like with some people. Know it's like you're in
maximum security prison. I don't think or.
Speaker 2: Anything like that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I went in and I wasn't in the maximum security.
But they got things called blocks, so you can go
to population or you can go.
Speaker 2: To the blocks.
Speaker 3: And so the murders ll like eggs anything egg, they
go into the blocks, you know what I mean, don't
go to population.
Speaker 2: So it ain't no security going, none of that in that.
Speaker 3: But anyways, we had a small a small like TV
where you can get like the basic.
Speaker 2: Channels, the basic cable channels. He was fighting on ESPN
that night. He was fighting and Dono. He was fighting Dono.
Speaker 1: That was not that was not Oh yeah that was ESPN.
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so there was that was that fight and so.
Speaker 1: What was it? What was it about that that? Like
just did you have like an epiphany like Okay, I'm
gonna change things when I when you saw him win
the Younger Speeder Championship, it was really just.
Speaker 3: A mental thing at the time because I hadn't been
sinised yet. I was still I was in there, you know,
I hadn't even bailed out or nothing.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: I hadn't went to court of nothing.
Speaker 3: So I was just put in my mind towards that
and and and kind of manifesting it in that way.
I really didn't have no no super plan. I was
still locked up, but I knew and the people around
me that was in the in the in the jails,
in the jail with me, they they was kind of like,
you know, they was kind of on my side with
it too, Like it was because I was still trying
to do a little boxing training in there, but it
wasn't nothing major. So it just gave me confidence being
that me and Terrence got a similar style, right, you
know what I mean, and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, when you look back, is that almost
like a I mean, listen, no one wants to be
in jail, obviously, but looking back that if that puts
you on the straight and narrow path and help lead
you to where you are now in your career. A
guy that's uh, you know, stayed out of trouble. I
guess since you've come out won the world championship, you know,
made some money, have opportunities. Uh is in the long run,
was it like a good thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: The last the last little sit I had in there
was definitely the eye opener because, like I said, I
hadn't been sinised yet and they didn't want to. They
didn't want to let us bond out. So I was
just sitting sitting and you don't never know, you know
what I mean, You never know if you're gonna sit
down to your sentences, so sending sentencing or what else whatever.
Speaker 2: So you had that opened my eyes.
Speaker 3: It just made me be like, all right, you need
to you need to go forward with it with the
boxing stuff, and tried one hundred percent. If not, then
you know what I mean, it's it's gonna go downhill.
Speaker 1: And how long were you did you serve them because
of that in the first place.
Speaker 2: I was. I was only in there for that time.
Speaker 3: For like five months, five five six months, But soon
as I got out, I stayed on the friend couch
and then I moved straight to uh FEMA rooms in
Houston and then we got it going.
Speaker 1: And that's when you went and turned it all over
the boxing and put your life into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, standing in the female rooms because I had a
friend she could get FEMA rooms in her name. So
I was just staying in Houston and I just started
going to Main Street boxing gym.
Speaker 2: And it just fell in fail in place everything.
Speaker 1: And so now, like we were talking about, you got
this important rematch with consas Ou coming up. You have
opportunity to regain a portion of the one hundred and
thirty pound title. And so my question then would be
if that happens and you're the winner of the fight,
like so many of us thought you won the first fight,
what sort of fights after that are interested? I mean,
you're you're one hundred and thirty pound way class. You know,
you're with top rank. They promote never at the in
Valdez who are fighting in a title fight later this year.
There's other talented fighters. Is it move up to one
hundred and thirty five pounds where there's also quality fighters?
You know, you're I don't know if Lomachenko is gonna
fight again, but he's got a belt, he's with top rank.
You know, what kind of things do you have in
your mind for your future if you regain this title?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Man, after we regained this title. I'm looking.
Speaker 3: I'm looking for the winner of Oscar Vats and never
say that that would be my first option. Anything outside
of that Loma, any anything, I'm I'm hoping for any
of the big fights. I'm not I'm not picking and
choosing whoever, whoever it is. If it's a big fighter's weekend,
we can unify. I can go up and fight for
another title than he's the one.
Speaker 2: I'm cool with it.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope you're cool with it. Come up your
fight with your renatural robson concasou uh coming up on
November two at the Turning Stone Casino on ESPN plus
so Shacky. I wish you the best of luck in
the fight, and I really appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you, brother. I appreciate you having