Justin "BK Warmonger" Watson

Justin Watson knocked out a nine to one favorite in 2.17 seconds, then spent the months after it waiting on a phone call.

Cason Banyas had been trying to book him for a while and kept running into scheduling problems, so this episode of Salty's Fight Talk opens with both men stuck in traffic. Cason was in the building for the fight that made Watson's name. He reached down for his beer, and by the time he looked up it was finished. He wanted the listeners to hear something other than a stat line, so he asked Watson where the fighting started.

It started where he grew up, where fighting was a pastime, and he came to MMA at 19 or 20 because the only gym around was a mixed martial arts gym. Grappling never held him, and he says it is exhausting at his age. He wanted to stand and bang. When a friend put him in touch with a manager who could get him bare knuckle bookings, he was done with MMA. He describes the sport plainly. It is not boxing and it is not MMA, it is closer to a fight, and it runs on power, durability and being alright with getting sliced open. He points at a top five prospect who had only ever been the hammer and came apart the first time he was the nail.

He competed as an amateur from about 2010, then left the sport to work, because he had to be financially responsible and could not train the way competing asked. He kept judging so he would still be near it. In his early 30s he decided it was now or never and turned pro around 2021. Nothing has come clean since. His first opponent missed weight by six pounds and the fight moved up a class. His second pulled out two days before. The last one was offered to him a class up as well, so a bantamweight has still never fought at bantamweight. Three weeks after the knockout he was in a car wreck and hurt badly enough that he is on cardio only, waiting on stem cells while the momentum sits there.

His daughter arrived in his early 20s and reordered everything; being a present father comes before the sport. He teaches kids jiu jitsu, kickboxing and MMA most days. One girl would not step on the mat at first and stayed next to her mother. A few months later she is the first one out there. He also coached a close friend's seven year old, who was diagnosed with stage four cancer and died last year. He stopped turning down opportunities after that, and says he will keep talking about her for as long as he is around.