© Marc Wickert www.knucklepit.com
Photography by Joshua Hedges
All photos copyright Zuffa LLC.

 

The original Huntington Beach Bad Boy is definitely back – and kicking. On the eve of Mother's Day, and before a packed house at Honolulu's Blaisdell Arena, David "Tank" Abbott took just 1.22 to knock out Wesley "Cabbage" Correira with one of his huge right punches that he had previously described as a 600-lb sledgehammer.

For the first half of this interview, David is at his hotel in Honolulu, sitting in a bar with his buddy, "Bird Dog", the day after the Correira fight.

"I f**ked Cabbage right up. It wasn't a KO, it was a TKO: a Tank Knock Out…Hold on one second… I've got to take a sip of my drink, and my right hand is hurting…Alright, I'm back. No, I f**ked that guy up the way he should have been knocked out the first time. I don't know, because I haven't seen it (the video), but people I've been talking with have said it's one of the best knockouts they've seen in a long time," says Abbott.

Billy Hull of the Honolulu Star Bulletin wrote the witty headline "Tank Shreds Cabbage", and stated that the crowd, which was "unanimously in the corner of local boy Correira when the fight started, was stunned after Abbott left Correira in a heap in the ring."

Interestingly, MMA fans got to see Tank unloading his newly developed Thai-kick techniques for the first time – well, the first time at a sanctioned fight, that is.

"I was kicking, by the way. They were response kicks. I was getting kicked and I kicked him back. Inside, I was laughing my arse off. I thought, 'Oh my God, this is goddam ludicrous. He's f**kin' kickin' me and I'm kicking him back.' It was pretty funny, actually. It was good to be back fighting like I used to be.

"I don't know what type of kicks they were," laughs Tank. "They were just kicks. I saw some pictures and I'm kicking him right across his midsection. I didn't think I could get my leg that high. It actually looked like I was doing some damage to him. Of course, my head's not in the photo, but you can tell it's me. I kept him on his toes.

"It's funny because I broke my hand, but I woke up the next day and my shins were hurting. I thought, 'What the f**k?' So I must have been kicking him pretty hard. My shins hurt more than my broken hand."

Cabbage has a reputation for leaning against the fence and letting his opponents wear themselves out a la Mohammed Ali's rope-a-dope strategy. But Abbott would have none of this.

"He tried to, but I wasn't going to go there. I knew that if I peppered him enough, he would open up. And that's exactly what happened. I wasn't going to crowd him and get him up where he could beat on me or anything. I got over that. He tumbled into a very, very hard right. I was kinda suckering him, trying to get him to come at me. And when he came in, I just f**kin' drilled him. He walked right into it. And from what I heard, he was picked up clean from his position and flew backwards about a foot, and landed on his arse."

David says he doesn't regard the victory as being a revenge bout, but rather as just what should have happened when they originally fought, before the fight was stopped due to a cut over Tank's right eye in UFC 45. He says it was ironic his defeat of Cabbage occurred on the Mother's Day weekend, and he dedicated the victory to his own mother who had passed away.

After the victory, Abbott stated: "This is just the beginning. You know what, man? It's great to feel f**kin' normal again." In the past, Tank has described his punches as 600-pound sledgehammers, but says the punch that caught Cabbage was more like a freight train.

"I suckered him into coming in at me. I was jabbing him, and hitting him with hooks. Finally he decided to come in on me. He ran into a right…Hold on, I've got to take another sip…My right hand is like a goddamed sausage."

A few days after defeating Cabbage, Tank returned home and it was confirmed his right hand was broken.

He is sitting at a bar in Huntington Beach when the interview continues.

David, how is your hand?

"It was a real clean break. They don't have to set it. They don't have to do anything. The doctor said to come back in four weeks and he'll look at it again. So I say two weeks and it should be fine."

Was Cabbage walking around the day after the fight?

"Oh, I think that I might have retired him. I certainly didn't see him. And I don't know if they were ribbing me or not, but they said he was out having a cocktail. I obviously didn't see him, and I said, 'Hey man, seriously, you should tell him that he shouldn't drink.' No, really, he'll end up dead."

Is Kimo next on your list, or just whoever?

"I would like to beat him up, but you never know how this business works."

In the background, a girl says something to Tank. "I'll rub you down later," he tells her, and then returns to the interview. "I was just getting a cheap thrill. There's a waitress here and I had to indulge.

"Hey, here's something you can put in your article. Do you get the Discovery Channel down there in Australia?"

Yes.

"Well, Dog Chapman is a 5-foot-7 bounty hunter who wears 4-inch heels on his cowboy boots, and some of his stooges wanted their photo taken with me in Hawaii, so they could be seen with someone from the real world.

"You may also want to put in there: I party quite a bit and I have no secrets, so when I'm drunk, I'll tell you the same thing sober. That's like the big deal with professional wrestling – they get you all drunk and then they try to pick your mind. I look right at you and go, 'I don't like, you motherf**ker, and I'll tell you that tomorrow when I'm sober. So what the f**k do you want to hear?' 'Um, ah, ah…' Do you know what I mean? I'm not too good at keeping secrets either. So don't tell me anything I shouldn't tell anybody else."

When you knocked out Cabbage in 1.22, you did what Andrei Arlovski wasn't able to do. How do you feel about that?

"Well, it would help if I knew who Andrei Arlovski was."

Does that go in the article?

"Absolutely. Who's that?"

He's going to be fighting Justin Eilers at UFC 53. Would you like to take on those guys?

"Once again, who's that?"

When will the fans see you again at UFC?

"Who knows what's coming next? I have no idea. I was going to say something weird, but I better not. Who knows? You just never know."

What are you doing at the moment?

"I'm sitting here at Huntington Beach, getting drunk and looking at the pier. I'm going to go now and get me an ugly woman."