Bellator MMA star Dalton Rosta is training with the best in the world at American Top Team, while his rival Norbert Novenyi Jr is doing the same with top stars at London Shoot Fighters.
But Rosta is unsure that Novenyi Jr is getting the best rounds possible, given his home’s propensity for housing influencer boxers among their top-level professionals. London Shoot is renowned as one of the UK’s best gyms, and is home to the likes of Michael ‘Venom’ Page and Darren Stewart.
However, there are also a number of celebrity boxers who train out of the famed facility; most famously YouTuber-turned-boxer KSI. The Brit has been at London Shoot since his 2022 comeback, and has since been joined by Armz Korleone and HSTikkyTokky among others.
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Dalton Rosta unimpressed by Norbert Novenyi Jr training with YouTube star KSI
Rosta is one of the hardest trainers on the Bellator roster, and made it his mission to face Novenyi Jr after looking through the potential fighters in their middleweight rankings. But he isn’t sure about some of his training partners; most notably chart-topping rapper and Misfits Boxing boss KSI.
“I’m not here to talk s*** but that’s the difference between our gyms,” Rosta told Bloody Elbow in an exclusive chat. “He’s training with influencers and s*** and I saw he had a picture with that Armz Korleone dude who’s a big influencer.
“A lot of the s*** over there seems like it’s just a lot of clout and influencer s***. I’m training with killers every single day. Some of these guys that train at gyms like that are a big fish in a small pond, then they travel to other gyms here and there to get good rounds in.
“Me? I’m in a dog fight every single f***ing day. The last four or five sparring sessions these last two or three weeks I’ve been sparring with Johnny Eblen and we’ve been going to f***ing war every single day, there’s not an easy round in this gym.
“If it’s not Johnny it’s Magomed Umalatov, an undefeated fighter in PFL. It’s Ikram Aliskerov who’s a top 15 fighter in the UFC and his only loss is to Khamzat Chimaev. Those are the guys I’m sparring with all of the time.”
Dalton Rosta made major push for Norbert Novenyi Jr fight after first loss
Heading into his last outing against Aaron Jeffery in August of last year, Rosta was unbeaten and heading towards the top of the middleweight division. But when the result didn’t go his way, he was keen to stay on that track, and wanted one of Khalid Murtazaliev or Norbert Novenyi Jr.
The Russian was injured, but they were able to deliver on a clash with the Brit, which takes place on Saturday night’s Bellator Dublin main card. “I hit up my manager and said I wanted one of those two guys,” he explained.
“They called me back the next day and basically said Murtazaliev was injured, but they could make the Norbert Novenyi Jr fight work. I got one of the two names I wanted… That last fight wasn’t my best showing.
“I’m not letting it effect me, I know I had a bit of an off night and it wasn’t my best performance. It sucks but it is what it is. I’ve got a one on my record and it probably shouldn’t have been to him, I felt like I was the better fighter, watched it back and felt I was the better fighter.
“But part of fighting is f***ing cardio and conditioning. For whatever reason I got tired in the fight. It f***ing happened and led to my downfall and at the end of the day I lost the fight and there can be a lot of reasons for that.
“Going forward I’m obviously trying to fix those holes and making sure that that doesn’t happen again.”