Days after putting on a life-changing performance against Carl Booth at Brave 8 and capturing the inaugural Welterweight title, Carlston Harris set out on a tour of gyms that helped him get to championship status. The Guianese fights out of Rio de Janeiro and visited traditional martial arts places such as RFT and Nobre Arte where he’s been training under the guidance of legendary local trainers such as MárcioCromado and Cláudio Coelho. He made it a point to “offer” the belt to friends, family and teammates, saying they all had a hand in his famous win over the Englishman last Saturday.
“No one gets to where they want to be alone. As a fighter, it’s been always my dream to be a world champion and I had to pay my respects and gratitude to those who helped me along the way. I’ve been blessed to be welcome in different gyms throughout my career and I represent RFT, but I’ve trained boxing with coach Coelho and wrestling in other gyms as well. I had to take my belt to those people and show them the fruits of their labor as well. It’s a dream to be where I am now and it has a lot to do with their hard work and support”, said Harris.
“I had to form a strategy against my opponent on the spot since I had no time to prepare for him. My performance wasn’t thrilling but I promise to put on a show in my first title defense. I’m willing to fight everyone. I’m the champion so I don’t choose contenders, I’ll fight anyone. I said I wanted to fight someone that wasn’t Brazilian, because if you look at my record almost all my fights have been against Brazilians, and I’ve proved I can hang with foreign opposition against Booth. Now it’s time to work and wait for the phone call”, claims Harris, who admits he would like to defend his belt in the upcoming card Brave Combat Federation is putting together for the International Fight Week in Bahrain.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to fight outside of Brazil and hopefully I get in on the Bahrain card. It’s supposed to be a huge event and I look forward to perhaps defending my title in the Kingdom of Bahrain”.
