King Kenny Breaks Silence After First Career Stoppage Loss: 'I’ll Come Back Stronger

Fans Rage on Social Media After Controversial Salt Papi vs King Kenny Fight

Slim knocks down Salt Papi during their middleweight bout / Will Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images.

By Robert Kemboi

Tik Tok sensation Salt Papi scored the biggest victory of his career on Thursday night, but all was not right in the immediate aftermath of the fight generally saw viewers impressed by what had just happened for Salt Papi. That quickly changed, though, when a new angle began to go viral showing what appeared to be the winner landing an illegal elbow in the winning exchange.

The victory was overshadowed by controversy, with Kenny raising doubts about the manner in which he was defeated. Many fans echoed his concerns, suggesting that an elbow may have been thrown during the final exchange.

Before the fight, there was a disagreement between the two teams regarding the number of rounds, with Kenny expecting a six-round bout and Papi believing it would be five. However, the issue became irrelevant when, in the third round, the Filipino delivered a clean right uppercut that sent his opponent tumbling through the ropes.

The incident was divisive, however, with others insisting that different angles showed a clearer vision of what had happened.

“Seen the replay,” one eagle-eyed fan tweeted on X. “Looks like a elbow from Salt Papi That KO win vs Kenny should get overturned.” A commenter replied: “Anyone saying that isn’t an elbow, knows nothing about boxing. That punch barely even grazed the nose.”

One man who weighed in quickly on X was the man of the hour King Kenny. After a respectful moment between the two in the ring, things seemed a bit more bitter on social media as he managed to get a look at what had happened.

“Am I bugging or is that not an elbow?” He asked in a viral tweet that was viewed over 1.3million times in just a few hours. He followed that up by complaining about the stoppage, adding: “nd I got up and i felt fine to keep fighting again, did the walk as well? Smh.”

He wasn’t the only Beta Squad member to share a similar opinion, with his close friend Sharky coming to his defense on X as well. “Looks like an elbow to me,” the fan wrote in another viral tweet.