Welterweight Shinard “Showtime” Bunch (22-3-1) just can’t quit his passion. Bunch will introduce himself to a wider audience on Sunday night at the Meta Apex in Las Vegas, where he’ll take on Vlad Panin (23-2) in a ten-round welterweight bout. The 26-year old admits that he’s come close to walking away from boxing before, but his love for the sport keeps on bringing him back. “I've actually tried to quit boxing before,” Bunch told UFC.com ahead of his Zuffa Boxing debut in Las Vegas on Sunday night. “I actually tried to stop. I don’t want to box no more. It’s over with. But once you find the love again, it’s not like anything else. It’s your real first love. So I see it’s just different. I tried to stop boxing so I should tell everybody everything they need to know.”
So, what made him come back? “The love for it,” he admitted. “Family, friends, mentors, just the people around me – I know for a fact they want to see me do good. I know for a fact I want to do good, you know, just in life. I have kids. One day I want my kids to be able to say, ‘My dad was this, my dad was that. But all in all, he was a great person,’ you know? From start to finish, I just try to be the best man I can be, every day.”
Bunch’s passion for boxing reached new heights when he was offered the chance to join the Zuffa Boxing roster. As someone who had already checked out Dana White’s industry-changing brand of boxing, he had no hesitation when he was presented the chance to hop aboard the train.
“I’ve been watching Zuffa before I got signed to them,” he said. “I feel like Dana White and Turki (Alalshikh) are elevating boxing in a different kind of way. So, when I got the call, I definitely (accepted).”
For an unassuming character like Bunch, it’s a move that pushes him a little out of his comfort zone. The sporting side of the change will see him testing his mettle inside the ring with opposition that more closely matches his own talent. But it also opens him up to something he hasn’t had to deal with too often before – dealing with the media and telling his own story. “I don't really open up much, so anything that you learn about me, I feel like it’s a bonus,” he admitted. “As a fighter, I can do anything. I can box, I’m known for having knockouts, but not only having knockouts, just being a brilliant boxer. I have all the tools to make me a world champion.”
“I don't really know too much about Panin,” he admitted. “Everybody's here for a reason, so we don't underestimate nobody. But I said we coming to fight, because we’re coming to win. We're not coming for no loss. We're not coming for no draw. We're coming to win. So, you know, good luck to him.”
Bunch heads into his Zuffa Boxing debut with a career record of 22-3-1 with 1 no contest, and 18 knockouts. The New Yorker is confident in his skills, and says that the experience he’s picked up in his 27 pro fights to date will stand him in good stead when he takes on Panin on Sunday night. “I just feel like I can box with the best of them,” said Bunch. “When I'm on my game, it's, it's really hard to turn me down. I feel like my experience in the different type of looks, angles, boxing accolades that I have, I just feel like (they) will play a big part within our fight.”
Bunch is hopeful that he can get his Zuffa Boxing career off to a winning start and says that he wants to inspire people back home that there is a path to greatness from his hometown to the “Fight Capital of the World”.
“I’m here to stay, definitely here to stay.,” he said. “We have a lot of politics in boxing. We have a lot of people that love you when you’re up and hate you when you’re down. So, for anybody that's around me – wins, losses – it's always been the same. It's always been back to square one. It's always been championship mentality.
“So, for just the people around me, I just want to show them that we can do it. Everybody else around me, you know we can do it. The coaches, the guys back home – I train within a gym – it’s possible, coming from where we come from, it's possible.”
