Nikita Tszyu is attempting to some strange food in the lead approximately his face-off with Jack Brubaker, revealing he participated in an unusual Cobra routine in a Thailand training school.
Cobra heart is thick like medication when you bite into at, and tastes like Jägermeister with some organic tips and a touch of chai tea.
It’s finest consumed raw – ideally while still beating – then cleaned down with the exact same snake’s blood.
That’s Nikita Tszyu’s suggestions after he tested the unusual special throughout training school in Thailand last month.
“It’s quite tasty, I enjoyed it,” Tszyu informed this masthead. “It was kind of like a chicken heart.
“It was nice, but weird.”
By Tszyu’s own admission that last remark summarize the 6-0 super-welterweight fighter completely: good, however strange.
At Thursday’s interview revealing his very first heading pay-per-view battle, which occurs on August 23 at the Hordern Pavilion versus Jack Brubaker, Tszyu explained the ‘Cronulla Cowboy’ Brubaker as having, “A beautiful personality. You have a bubbliness to you, and I respect it. You’re unique and you own it.”
The remark captured Brubaker off guard.
“I wouldn’t go back to his house if he invited me over for a barbecue, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “I’d wake up with his dogs licking my toes and tied to a chair, he’s a strange cat.”
Brubaker is area on about the threat of a Nikita Tszyu barbecue.
Beef testicle, lamb heart and raw liver have actually all been on the menu, however snake heart rates as the strangest.
It’s loaded with protein, obviously, however Tszyu says he was more thinking about the routine.
“They killed it in front of us and I ate the heart as it was still beating,” he said. “We weren’t allowed to record the process of it being killed, but they give it to you in a cup, you swallow the heart then drink the blood.
“I was chewing it, trying to understand the taste to it. The Thai girls watching were looking at me like I’m a creep, thinking I was actually enjoying it.
“It’s a very spiritual thing.
“Although it’s sad having the life stripped out of it, I paid respect to it. I was looking into its eyes, I said a prayer to it, saying, ‘Thank you for your life’.”
Tszyu is not sure if his training school snack was totally legal.
“They tied it up with string from its head, and it was kind of choking,” he said. “They had it in full tension, turned it around, got a razor and sliced open the stomach without killing it.
“I was looking at the snake like, ‘the poor thing’.
“I felt bad, but they said it would die soon. They ripped out its guts, got some black-blue organ, popped it, squeezed it into the blood, then pulled out the heart as it was still beating.
“It was still beating when I ate it.”
Unsurprisingly, Tszyu says he was initially presented to snake hearts as nourishment – which has a long history in South East Asia – by his papa, Kostya.
“There’s a deep history of warriors drinking snake blood to give them strength in wars,” he said. “When my father came with us to Thailand, I witnessed him drinking snake blood.
“I was eight or 10 or something, and for some people that would have been traumatising or scarring.
“But I got to look at my dad as a warrior, a champion. This is what real men do, so it was always embedded in my head.”
Asked about his younger bro’s unique diet plan, Tim says he attempts to keep away from it.
“He put it in the group chat we have, a beating heart with blood … it’s not my thing,” he informed this masthead. “I wouldn’t say it’s a thing, but if we’re both in that situation, I’d try it with him.
“I’m not much of an experimental eater. I let Nikita do his thing.
“He’s always been like that.”
Nikita is hoping the snake heart snack will pay dividends when he enters the ring versus the 17-4-2 Brubaker on August 23.
He was deep in training school when Brubaker returned from a 26-month lay-off to beat Troy O’Meley in a hard-fought choice 2 weeks earlier.
“I actually haven’t watched it, I only got news that Brubaker actually lost it,” he said. “I don’t think I actually need to watch it.
“I’ll eventually watch it, but I don’t think it’s a fight to judge him off. You want to watch someone and study them at their highs, when they’re dangerous, not when they’re vulnerable.
“I want to enjoy the sweetness of seeing him vulnerable. I’ll prepare for his most dangerous self.”
