{"id":202039,"date":"2025-06-21T08:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T08:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/202039\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T08:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T08:11:09","slug":"wirral-man-travels-to-nigeria-to-take-part-in-ancient-combat-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/202039\/","title":{"rendered":"Wirral man travels to Nigeria to take part in ancient combat sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Leyland fought against local fighter, Shagon Yellow and lost, but admitted his opponent was surprised when he uttered a phrase in &#8216;Hausa&#8217; shortly before the match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;I remembered the Rocky film when Ivan Drago was stood in front of Rocky where he says &#8216;if he dies he dies&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I thought if I can take a little bit of that with me, so I said in their language, &#8216;Leyland is here and he will win&#8217; and he was really taken aback but equally I could tell the community had respected my willingness to learn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Whatever the local fighters go through, I wanted to go through, out of respect for the sport and the people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The documentary has not been released yet, but Mr Leyland said he wats to showcase his journey to the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mr Leyland fought against local fighter, Shagon Yellow and lost, but admitted his opponent was surprised when he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-202039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114720347704406945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}