Robin Safar thankful for the new pathway boxing has given him in life
The path from Sweden to Las Vegas has not been trod by many boxers.
Even Sweden’s busiest fighting export, heavyweight champion Ingemar Johansson, never made it that far west to box, having his big US fights in New York and Miami against rival Floyd Patterson.
But there is not much conventional in the story of Robin Safar.
He left home for Sin City in 2017, knowing that he would have to travel in order to fulfill his boxing dreams.
Safar had not been back to Sweden for seven years, but he spoke to BS from Stockholm, where he visited friends and family.
“Meeting close ones,” he said, while enjoying food he has been forced to miss while in Vegas.
“I don't know if you ever heard about kebab pizza,” he said. “We were very famous for kebab pizza. And we also got something called a kebab plate, with fries and kebab. It's just the sauces and everything that makes it different, you know?
“And, bro, what else? I've been eating fornicating McDonald's over here. You know, even the McDonald's is different over here than compared to the States. I feel like the States’ McDonald's over there is whack. And obviously my mom’s food.”
Safar moved from home a couple of years before the pandemic. The cruiser admitted missing family and friends has been the toughest part.
“Obviously, the network that I built up during the years because I was in Sweden for 24 years before I moved,” he said. “I have a big network over here because I've been running around, you know. I've been out and about – if we put it that way. I have a big network out there that I didn't have in Vegas. But I'm getting there in Vegas as well. I'm starting to get a good network out there as well.”
Aiding the transition is his time spent at the popular and evolving DLX Boxing Gym, more than 15 minutes away from The Strip. The distance suits Safar, a family man who is settled down in a relationship and has children. He likes the different pace of Vegas that residents feel, not the manic crush of the tourists looking for gold up and down the city’s most vibrant and congested section.
“I love Vegas, man. That's my home today,” he said. “It's not about gambling or the party life or anything like that. It's more like it's actually the calm pace, because the pace is super-calm outside The Strip. People think just because I live in Vegas that I'm going hard out there.
“There's no traffic. Everything is close. My gym is, like, 15 minutes away. My grocery store is, like, two minutes driving. All the restaurants are close; everything's close. [Physio, massage and chiropractor] therapy – everything, like, everything – is just super-convenient, convenient living there.”
Asked whether he could use some counseling therapy, Safar smiles. “I do need therapy, though, but I'm trying to save that for after the career,” he said.
Safar said that is one of the things he misses about home, where he has people he will have deep conversations with.
“I have, like, therapy sessions with my people, basically my close ones,” he said. “Because we're pushing each other, you know? And obviously, I can always be open with my close ones, my friends and my family, and they're always putting me in the right direction. They're always saying the right things for me – not the things that I want to hear, but things that I need to hear. So obviously I believe that's something that I'd be missing in Vegas as well.
“Obviously, everybody's just a phone call away, but, you know, the time difference and everything.”
There were times, particularly during the pandemic years, when Safar questioned whether he had made the right move.
“I've been hesitating about staying in Vegas many times, man,” he continued.
“Many, many, many times, until I had my daughter, to be honest. Before that, it was like, ‘Yo, should I keep doing this?’ Like, ‘What the fornicate am I doing?’ You know, and then the pandemic happened. I was like, ‘Man, the world is going to end, I need to go home.’ You know, I thought it was about to be doomsday, and it definitely has been a journey and a roller coaster, for sure. I had my downs, but I also have had my ups. My downs have been pretty hard when it comes to money-wise and fight-wise and shit like that. But thank God that I kept on staying on the, on the road and I didn't fold, and we're here today.”
In terms of career achievement, the risk is so far reaping the rewards.
Safar is rated in the top 10 by the WBO and the IBF. He scalped a veteran in Sergey Kovalev – dropping him in Round 10 – three fights ago. The 32-year-old Safar is now 19-0 (13 KOs).
The Kovalev fight was in Saudi Arabia, and although Safar knew he would have to travel to realize his boxing goals, he did not think it would end up with him moving so far away, for so long. Safar thought he might be away four or five months a year in camps and then fighting before going home, or that he might just travel for sparring.
But he got married (twice) and then had a green card, which he received just before the Kovalev fight.
It is Kovalev’s name that stands out on Safar’s record, but the Swede feels he inherited none of the former light heavyweight titleholder’s fighting equity given his advanced years.
He is more than blunt in saying so.
“I mean, to be honest with you, I feel like [beating Kovalev] didn’t do jack, man, to be honest. It didn't do shit because I feel like everybody downgrades who he was when I fought him. They were like, ‘Oh, he’s old, he’s washed, he's this, he's that.’ They didn't give me my credit. They didn't give me my flowers for what I did to him.
“It's just the thing in boxing that when you are that guy who just makes people look like nothing, basically, I think people don't give you your flowers until you actually beat the people with the names, you know? That's definitely how it is. But I think that's a part of boxing.”
It is a sport that does not have rich cultural roots in Sweden, and Safar did not go looking for it, either. Instead, it found him.
“Being in the streets and doing what I was doing, obviously, it got me into a lot of trouble, right? But there was a moment in my life when I did something where I ended up in youth jail,” he said. “And I was there for, like, a year and a half – a couple of months less than a year and a half. And they were about to send me home; they decided that they wanted to send me to a treatment center for kids because they wanted me to function in society and be able to change my mindset. I ended up at this treatment center. I think I was like 18. And that's when I started with MMA – mixed martial arts – because that's what they were doing over there. I was obliged to train during the day. It was like a super-structure of the day. We worked eight hours from waking up. We were eating breakfast, then we worked all day. Then we were training from, like, five to seven, five to 6:30 [p.m.] every day. And then after that, we had therapy and shit together, like, in a group. Anyway, you have to pick between the fitness gym, like lifting weights and shit, or they called it the mat.
“I never been a fan of lifting weights, so they went up to the mat and I just saw these boxing bags and boxing gloves and MMA gloves. And that's how it started. It started with mixed martial arts. And the thing that I did really like about it was that we sparred every Saturday, right? And we didn't only spar, I didn't only spar like the other inmates or the kids that was there. We sparred with staff, too. And we always got it in with the staff sometimes, so you’d be like, ‘Oof, I can't wait until Saturday. I’m gonna fornicate this guy up,’ you know? That's kind of like the beauty of it. And it also gave me a love for it, you know? And then I went back home, I messed up my knee and then a family friend of mine told me to start boxing because my knee was being effed up. I had my first fight after like three, four weeks, cause I lied to the coach that I started training with. I told him I'd been fighting for, like, a year, two years boxing, and he believed me. I had my first fight, I won by TKO and then I just kept on going since.”
Safar estimates he had more than 50 amateur fights, but until then, he had had little interest in boxing. He hadn’t watched the stars fighting and didn’t pay attention even to box-office fights.
But as he learned, he liked watching Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Marvin Hagler, Roberto Duran, and he certainly liked boxing from the start far more than he ever liked soccer.
“I hate soccer, bro,” Safar said flatly.
“My father, yeah … I hate soccer. My father, he loves football. He loves soccer. That's his life until this day. That's all he talks about. It's all he did when I grew up, and he really wanted me to play soccer. He woke me up in the morning before he went to work. He was like, ‘We're going to go out and play soccer.’ But I couldn't do it, man. Eventually, I literally started crying and shit in the mornings because I didn't want to fornicating do it. And I've been having a hate towards him my whole life. And I never really gave it a chance. I've been to games. I took my dad to Real Madrid versus Barcelona. El Clásico, at Camp Nou in Barcelona. I took him to other games, too, but I didn't do any other forms in any other sport.”
Safar’s dad was a barber. His parents divorced when he was only 11, and there were a few years when he and his dad did not see one another.
Since moving to Las Vegas, however, he has formed a bond with WBC cruiserweight titleholder Badou Jack, ironically a countryman who fights in the same weight class.
Safar’s best friend in Sweden is Jack’s older brother, who told Badou to make sure Safar got to the gym and to show him around. Jack and Safar sparred a lot, too, and in Vegas, Safar has swapped live rounds in the gym with Kubrat Pulev, Jared Anderson, Efe Ajagba, Guido Vianello, Darius Fulgham, Caleb Plant and Lonnie B among many others.
All the while, Safar, who most recently outpointed Derick Miller Jnr on November 8, closes in on his goal of becoming a champion. He can feel how close he is.
“I think the road that’s been set up for me just is perfect because I learned a lot in my last fight. … I can't and I won't give a F about what anybody thinks or says or, you know, anything. And I think that's just a way of shaping me for the future.”
Sweden has made international headlines for its crime rates, and with that in mind, Safar is content living with his young family in Vegas. It is that culture not only that Safar is staying away from, but it was the one that had tried to entice him when he was younger.
“I would have been dead going down that different path,” he said.
“I would have been dead. I wouldn't even have been in jail. I would have been dead.”
Does that mean Safar is a bad guy who has become good, or is he a bad guy who just moved?
“No, I'm a good guy who's doing the right thing today,” he said. “I've always been a good guy.”
