Wiz Khalifa has buffed up and is not the puny rapper that he used to be, thanks to his new passion of mixed martial arts fighting.
In an interview with the Bleacher Report, Wiz discussed his upcoming Rolling Papers 2 rap album and he got real about his body transformation from the 140-pound “skinny lil n—a” he often referred to himself as, to the 175-pound stud he is now.
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Wiz, who is currently on the Dazed & Blazed summer tour with Rae Sremmurd, said he has gained 35 pounds since his last album in the past four years because of mixed martial arts. But he doesn’t intend of parlaying his talents into the Octagon.
Wiz said some family members got him interested in marital arts and since he was tired of getting beat down, he decided to level up on his fighting skills.
“My cousins train jiu-jitsu and stand-up as well. I just got tired of getting my ass whooped, so I figured I would learn how to fight.”
“Getting your ass whooped (laughs). You get your ass whooped, and you don’t want to do it no more. That’s what it was,” he explained.
When asked how his cousins got interested in mixed martial arts, Wiz replied:
“They’re like super big, and they’ve got anger problems. They needed to manage that anger. So they started taking it out on other people, and then they started to take it out on me and my friends too.
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Wiz said he started with learning the art of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and then moved into muay thai, fighting styles well known to mixed martial artists.
“The first person I went to go see was [Brazilian jiu-jitsu eighth-degree red and black belt] Rigan Machado. I did jiu-jitsu with him for like a month or two, which was cool. I practiced throws with a Grappling Dummy. Then I started going to Unbreakable, which is a gym in L.A. That’s where I became a muay thai [fighter]…that’s when my mind changed to like, “OK, this is what I want to do.” I like the conditioning. I like the stand-up aspect of it. I like the footwork. So I was like I’m gonna f–k with this a little more than jiu-jitsu.”
Now that he’s a bigger dude, Wiz joked that little skinny guys need to form an alliance so they can be buff too.
“I just want all the skinny lil n—as to get in the gym and start fighting so we can form our own army of skinny n—as with sharp elbows and knees that can take over the world.”