Hanging With......Chris Shiflett at a Boxing Club

Kerrang! 2003

Hanging With Chris HOW DID YOU GET INTO BOXING?
"I never really enjoyed going to the gym to work out. I thought it was boring. Also, growing up, my brother was the biggest boxing fan, so I had an interest In it. I tried Thai boxing and didn't enjoy that too much, so I switched over to traditional boxing. This was around '98, I was about 27. It was about six months before I started playing with the Foo Fighters."

HAVE YOU ACTUALLY FOUGHT ANYONE?
"Well, I got my own trainer, and then you start to think, 'I want to try sparring'. And then you think, 'I want to fight in a white collar fight'. A white collar fight is just bringing together guys like me, who aren't professionals."

LIKE 'FIGHT CLUB'?
"But not so sinister. You're not going out there to kill each other - just to have fun with it. And I've had a couple more fights since then. Actually, I had an amateur fight set up, and I got my ass kicked. The guy just beat the hell out of me."

WHAT INJURIES HAVE YOU SUSTAINED?
"Nothing worse than fat lips and black eyes. I had the worst black eye of my life a few months ago; one side of my eye was just puffed out with blood. It looked really horrid. And I went to bed, and over the course of the night, the blood spread out all across my eye."

WHAT DOES YOUR WIFE THINK OF ALL THIS?
"She is not supportive of it in the least. She doesn't want me to go to the gym and she doesn't want to see me fight. She just does not like it."

HAVE YOU HAD ANY FIGHTS OUTSIDE THE RING?
"No, except for little scraps when I was a kid. I don't walk around acting like I'm a tough guy, because I'm not. But boxing's not like that it's different because..."

IT'S A GENTLEMAN'S SPORT?
"(Laughs) It's all about strategy and skill. It is! Plus, in a street fight there are no rules. There's no referee saying, 'No hitting below the belt with your baseball bat'."

DO YOU HAVE A KILLER NICKNAME. LIKE BIFFER, BRUISER OR ROCKY?
"Not yet but my trainer gives me really bad nicknames all the time that I can't repeat here. It's nothing that's gonna stick, though. I kinda like 'The Tiger'."

THAT DAVE GROHL IN YOUR SIDE-PROJECT BAND - COULD YOU TAKE HIM IN A FIGHT?
"He's a pretty big guy. And he's used to drumming. Outside of the fact that he's my friend, he'd probably kill me. He's a foot taller than me!"

BUT YOU'VE GOT THE TRAINING.
"Have you seen him play drums?The guy's got fast hands. That's a big part of the sport."

HOW MANY ROUNDS WOULD IT GO?
"Well, he smoked for a long time, that might be to my advantage. But if it went the distance, who knows?"

WOULD YOU BET ON IT?
"My money would be on Dave."

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