“This Is Hugely Disappointing”: After Mitchell Hooper, Strongman Legend Brian Shaw Reacts to his Finishers Championship Bout Being Postponed

Just days after the World’s Strongest Man Mitchell Hooper withdrew from the Finishers Championship and lashed out at the organizers of the event, Brian Shaw has also shared disappointing news. The four-time World’s Strongest Man winner announced that his fight has been indefinitely postponed much to his disappointment.

The Finishers Championship is a mixed martial arts event that is set to be held in Qatar on February 17. The strongman legend’s latest episode was a training vlog for the fight. Besides losing weight and learning multiple disciplines like striking and grappling, Shaw also invested his time. So, the former champion decided to include the training footage he had already shot alongside his response.

“I’m frustrated” Brian Shaw not happy with the fight postponement

The 41-year-old has trained to gain maximum strength as a career strongman. Brian Shaw decided to wrap up his Strongman career and move over to combat sports in his pursuit of becoming the most dangerous man in the world. He was set to face Martyn Ford, and later on, the winner of the duel between Eddie Hall and Mitchell Hooper, but Shaw will now have to wait to start his career in MMA.

The strongman veteran shared his raw emotions as he was disappointed at his fight being postponed. Delivering the news he said, “It looks like the February 17th date for my fight is, at the bare minimum, going to be postponed. Not great news coming out of this meeting. I’m frustrated and pi**ed off because I have been putting so much into this.”

“As you can imagine, this is hugely disappointing to me due to the fact that for the last five months, I dove in head first, I have committed myself fully to be as prepared as I could be for this fight,” Shaw said in the video. Besides training in fighting disciplines, the four-time champion also lost weight to get in fighting shape. Yet, the physical strain was only part of the challenge. Brian Shaw said he had to take time away from his wife, children, and business.

Shaw added, “I am also very disappointed because I took and dedicated a lot of time to this, which took time away from my wife, kids, businesses, and everything. I really put a lot of strain on other people around me.”

So, even his personal life suffered, only for the rug to get pulled out at the last moment. Despite feeling frustrated, Brian Shaw chose to look on the brighter side. While the training might have been hard, he did achieve the objective of transitioning away from strongman training and improving his cardio. Despite this adjournment and the withdrawal of Mitchell Hooper citing unfulfilled promises, the Finishers Championship has not changed the event’s status on its website. 

Earlier Hooper only had harsh words for the Finishers Championship after he withdrew from the event.

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Mitchell Hooper’s cited false promises as his reason for withdrawing

The reigning World’s Strongest Man wrote that the entire premise had sounded shady. The WSM winner also thought a private company would organize the championship. However, Hooper found that the Qatari government was involved. Initially, the organizers had also offered each of the four athletes $30 million, win or lose.

The champion strongman said later $30 million turned into $3 million. Hooper also revealed that unlike Brian Shaw and Eddie Hall, he didn’t even train for the fight. “I spent 0-time training for this because I had a gut feeling that they were useless,” the 28-year-old wrote in his Instagram story. Instead, Mitchell Hooper trained for the Arnold Classic Strongman in March.

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While Mitchell Hooper focused on Strongman, Brian Shaw went through a challenging training camp. Thankfully, at least Shaw is happy to be walking away as a fitter man despite the disappointing end to the MMA super fight.