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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Sport
Will Freeman

Paul Bamba explains Tommy Fury fight cancellation and reveals John Fury intervention

Tommy Fury's fight against Rolly Lambert was met with boos on Sunday night, with the exhibition bout in Dubai being played out at an exhibition pace with Jake Paul acting as chief antagonist in his role as commentator.

However, this was a fight which was never meant to happen, with Paul Bamba having been supposed to fight Fury in a professional bout before it was called off after controversy surrounding the weights. Fury gave a statement on Sunday saying that he fulfilled his contractual obligations with regards to his weight - with the Love Island star weighing in at 82.3kg.

On Sunday, Bamba spoke exclusively to FairBettingSites.co.uk to give his side of the story. He explained the situation, saying: "I realised Tommy had a different contracted weight when he jumped on the scales. When they said ‘he's not overweight’ I said 'what the hell are you on about?'. They then said 'our contract was 81kg'. Well, if it was 81kg 1) my contract was not 81kg and 2) you are 82.3kg, which is still over by a kilogram."

READ MORE: Tommy Fury vs Rolly Lambert fight booed as Jake Paul involved in farcical scenes

"He's a liar, he's a little kid - they're building him I get it. He's scared though, I probably should not have instilled fear in his heart at the open workout. Everything went downhill from there. He started acting differently, the kid was scared. Plain and simple."

Bamba also revealed that Fury's father John stepped in to try and prevent the fight from being cancelled by offering money from his own pocket before a member of the promotional team put the brakes on it.

The American revealed his view of the sequence of events which led to the fight's cancellation, saying: "I asked for 20 percent of Tommy's purse. The promotional company wasn't willing to do it. John Fury called me and said 'if we don't fight we don't get paid and you don't get paid - let's come to an agreement'. John was offering to pay me out of his pocket and we were going to come to an agreement and then the representative came over and clipped the entire thing. We came extremely close and were about a minute and a half from shaking hands.

“I did everything I was supposed to do, we were right about to make a deal and then they cut it and they said I was acting like a 'Michael Jackson'. I don't even know what that means. And they said I was being 'too princely' and 'a little girl' - verbatim, over a few pounds.

“Even John Fury was on my side, he had a nice conversation with me trying to make it all work. We ended up bumping into each other and then one of the representatives - I can't name them because they have weird laws here - pretty much just canned the fight after he pushed my chest and told us the fight was off.

“I've done everything I needed to do. We were minutes away from making a deal. Then they pulled the plug. Tommy never really wanted to fight me. I've been his only opponent that's come to fight and now we're going to watch him knockout some other f*cking bum tonight that they've found in Dubai.

“The fact that any commission was allowed to sanction a fight with fighters having two different weights is a mishap on its own, and an oversight on his team’s end and on the promotional companies’ end and particularly on the commissions’ end.”

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