IT’S not often that Martin Murray gets angry. But he is now furious. He was due to challenge WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders but for the second time Saunders has pulled out of the contest.
The champion incurred further ire from Murray when Saunders posted a video on Instagram daring Martin to face him at the Tyson Fury fight on Saturday in Manchester and risk being levelled.
“He’s got no respect for anybody. He’s just got no class about him,” Murray told Boxing News. “He’s done a post on Instagram, offered me a straightener at Tyson Fury’s fight on Saturday in Manchester. First of all, how old is he? Second of all, he couldn’t fight me because he’s injured but now he wants a straightener.
“We were meant to be having a proper fight for money in two weeks, but he couldn’t because he’s injured. But instead he wants a straightener next Saturday and he’s okay to do that. He’s not injured to do that but he’s injured to fight for his world title belt. The thing is with him he doesn’t want to lose his belt because he knows I’ve got his number. He’s never fought anybody like me.”
“He’s a f****** s***house. That’s all I can say about him,” Murray declared. “He can’t intimidate me. He’s a f****** idiot. The fight’s gone now, it’s never going to happen. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There’s no way I’d ever fall for it a third time. He’s still giving it the big ‘un now. He’s just an embarrassment, an embarrassment to the sport and just a horrible little creature.”
Murray has lost on his payday after being forced to abandon two training camps. “It cost money, two training camps abroad. It cost money, there’s everything that comes with it. There’s money it cost me potentially in sponsorships and stuff like that. There’s money that’s cost you where you’ve put stuff on hold because you’ve been doing these training camps. I’ve been training the first half of this year. I’ve got f*** all from it,” he said.
“But you know what, that’s only money at the end of the day,” Murray continued. “I spend every single day with my kids, the fact that I left them for … four weeks in total to do training camps, the fact that I’ve left them for so long, kills me. You can’t put a price on that. You cannot put a price on that.
“Money’s just money. It’s the precious time that you can’t get back and that’s the time that I’ve spent away from my family.”
He doesn’t however believe that Saunders called off their fight in order get a middleweight unification with Gennady Golovkin. “I know he’s world champion now and he’s more experienced but I think if you want challenges and you want tests I think by nature you’ll take them whenever. He didn’t fancy it then and he’s doesn’t fancy it now. I don’t think the fight will ever happen,” Murray said. “I don’t even think he can make middleweight. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did super-middleweight in his next fight.”
Murray is still prepared to box at the O2 later this month. “I’m still ready to fight June 23. I’ve just got to take whatever comes,” he says. And if Saunders won’t put his WBO crown on the line, he thinks he deserves at least an ‘Interim’ title fight. “I think that’d be, I suppose, kind of a compensation. The fact that I’ve had two sanctioned WBO world title fights and both of them getting pulled,” Murray said.
“You’d think that would be a decent thing to do. [But] I’m not expecting it now.”
