(Barcroft Media)
TAKE THAT! Pro kickboxer John Howard gave Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev (inset) a thrashing — but now wishes he had killed him. (
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He busted the Boston Marathon bomber’s nose — but wishes he’d broken his neck.
A UFC fighter who regularly sparred with Tamerlan Tsarnaev is haunted by the thought that he could have stopped the attack if he had just beaten the creep to death.
“The only thing I wish is that I could have just kept hitting him and hitting him and hitting him,” John Howard told The Post as he prepared to get back in the ring at TD Garden Saturday for UFC Fight Night, the launch card for the new FOX Sports 1 network.
Howard was a regular at Boston’s Wai Kru gym — the same place where the ex-Golden Gloves champ Tsarnaev, 26, worked out before he and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, detonated a pair of bombs at the Marathon’s finish line on April 15.
The Muay Thai kickboxing ace said he went numb when he learned that his sparring partner was behind the attack that killed three and wounded 264 others.
“It was a crazy experience,” Howard said. “I couldn’t believe that happened. It hit so close to home.”
Howard, 30, said Tsarnaev came to Wai Kru with a chip on his shoulder, and sought out Howard, a tough UFC middleweight he knew by reputation.
Tsarnaev, Howard admitted, was a better pure boxer than he and knocked him around during their first few bouts.
“He got a little cocky,” said Howard.
So the next time, Howard went at Tsarnaev hard, breaking the hulking thug’s nose and dropping him with a crushing left hook to the body. Now, he said, he wishes he’d knocked the fiend out for good.
Howard said that while he was “cool” with Tsarnaev in the gym, the two were not close. The Chechen national, he said, “was in his own world” and gave no indication he harbored extremist, anti-American views.
Howard will be returning to the UFC for the first time in two years Saturday night. when he goes up against Uriah Hall
“I’ll have Boston on my back — ‘Boston Strong’ all the way,” he said.
“We do want to remember the things that happened, the people that got hurt, got killed. The city came together. We didn’t show we were hurt. We came back strong, It’s coming full circle. Things happen for a reason.”
The Tsarnaev brothers were identified as suspects by the FBI three days after they detonated two pressure-cooker bombs.
Tamerlan was gunned down during a firefight with cops, while his wounded brother, Dzhokhar, was later captured and slapped with federal charges.
Additional reporting by Bob Fredericks