NOS Sport•vandaag, 16:56
Ben Saddik is back and looks at Verhoeven: ‘I know what the fans want’
Jamal Ben Saddik sits relaxed on a chair in a gym in Utrecht. Laughing and with a Flemish accent, the Antwerp resident of Moroccan descent asks for silence in the room when his interview starts. “We’re recording man, otherwise it could all be over soon!”
Ben Saddik (34) has had a turbulent time. He was suspended by kickboxing organization Glory after a kick in the direction of Rico Verhoeven, was also given a doping suspension, was sentenced to prison for money laundering and fraud and, to make matters worse, lost his sister.
There is little to see of the infamous ‘bad boy’ in Utrecht. Good-humored and chatty, Ben Saddik looks ahead to his return as a kickboxer. There are no feelings of revenge, he swears. “It is my love for the sport that makes me want to return. To realize my boyhood dream of becoming world champion.”
‘Feint’ to Verhoeven
Ben Saddik would like to talk about his suspensions. The doping suspension was entirely his own fault, says the two-metre-five man. “I wasn’t focused: having just arrived in Thailand, I had to fill out all the documents quickly. I made a mistake with the onboarding form.”
“I had forgotten to write down the medication I received at the time. Later I was able to prove that I received those medications on a doctor’s prescription and that is why I received a low suspension of only six months.”
He is light-hearted about the kick to Verhoeven, for which he was suspended for six months by Glory. “That feint I made… Believe me: if I wanted to hit him with a kick, I would certainly have done so. I think the reaction was too extreme with that six-month suspension.”
ANPThe moment between Ben Saddik (in white) and Verhoeven in which Ben Saddik kicked
Verhoeven is Ben Saddik’s great rival. “He is not a priority at the moment, that is the next match for me,” the Belgian says about the Dutchman. He immediately adds with a grin: “But I also know what the fans want. I am convinced that if I continue to do my job, Rico will not escape our fight.”
And Ben Saddik has continued to do his work in recent months, apart from a short period of rest. “After the death of my sister, I took a few days of rest to recover myself. Afterwards I picked up everything again.”
“The sparring sessions we go through here in the gym are super hard,” says Ben Saddik. “Fighters come from all over the world to spar here and those sessions are really tough. So I don’t have anything like ‘ring rust’ now, or that I still have to get into it.”
Super fight with hard knockout
Ben Saddik returns to the ring in February and promises fireworks. “People are longing for a super fight, for hard knockouts. That’s what they miss and what they didn’t get. And I hope to bring that back.”
Ben Saddik will take a route that, he hopes, will lead him to a title fight with Verhoeven. “Definitely. I really want that fight. It will only be nice if our match takes place again. He is the world champion who has been undefeated for twelve years, you can only respect that as an athlete.”
Before that happens, Ben Saddik will first fight other boxing matches. “If I no longer had the poison, I would have given up a long time ago. But I love the sport so much. I just think it’s great to be back.”