Mark Haskins Says Nigel McGuinness Cost Him Last Year’s Super Strong Style 16

Mark Haskins still blames Nigel McGuinness for costing him the 2023 Super Strong Style 16 tournament. Haskins faced Kid Lykos in the finals of last year’s tournament with McGuinness as the referee. Lykos got the win when McGuinness intervened between the two.

Lykos and Haskins will meet at the 2024 Super Strong Style tournament in a PROGRESS World Title match, and Haskins spoke with Fightful about the match. You can see highlights below, per Fightful:

In a recent interview with Fightful, Mark Haskins was asked about Kid Lykos’ recent claims that he likes to ‘revise history’, with Haskins responding with his belief that Lykos is delusional.

On Lykos saying that he’s trying to revise history with his claims: “Well, first of all, I’m not gonna sit through a Kid Lykos interview. I can think of no worse way to spend my time. I did see that the headline that he said that I like to revise history. I really have to ask the question, like, you know, is Kid Lykos completely delusional? Because there is no denying in that match, eeah, I got frustrated with Nigel McGuinness. I felt like he was being a little bit disrespectful towards me. I thought he might have been counting a little bit slow. I had words with him.”

On McGuinness’ involvement in the match: “Obviously, I’ve never been to the finals of a Super Strong Style 16 tournament. So maybe I just let the pressure get to me. But I had words of Nigel. It did not end well, it got a little bit physical. Then I grabbed Lykos, I was going to give him the brain buster, his own finishing move, and Nigel McGuinness came over, he grabbed me, he pulled me out, and then he threw me back to Lykos, and Lykos hit a move on me. I managed to kick out of that. But then Lycos comes off the top and hits me with something else. At this point, it was enough to keep me down. So for Kid Lykos to say that I’m crazy about how things went down, no, it’s pretty damn clear. Nigel McGuinness got involved, it changed the momentum of the match, and it allowed Kid Lykos to win.”