Britain’s Ryan lost the WBO welterweight world title to Mayer last September in New York, but only after she was doused with paint when leaving her hotel to travel to the arena at the Madison Square Garden Theatre.
Ryan is adamant that incident disrupted her preparations ahead of a fight which she lost to Mayer by majority decision. They will now rematch in Las Vegas, live on Sky Sports Action from midnight on Sunday morning.
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“A hit and run or whatever you want to call it. A guy got out of his car and threw a can of paint on me about three hours before I was about to get into the ring. It disturbed a little bit of the preparation,” Ryan told Sky Sports.
“But we just went ahead. I’m a fighter at the end of the day. So I got on with the fight. I’d done a full camp in Las Vegas already so I wasn’t going home without finishing the job.
“With regards to my performance, I didn’t rate it but that was because of me fighting with aggression, too much of it, just constantly coming forward, not bothering about what was coming back at all.
“The result, it was close enough that you couldn’t really argue either way.”
Mayer doesn’t want any type of incident to overshadow this rematch. “I’m not worried. I’m not going to sit here and worry about that,” she told Sky Sports.
“It’s possible,” she suggested. “What if someone wants to retaliate on me? If another crazy fan thinks that it was me and wants to retaliate on me.”
Promoter Bob Arum told Sky Sports: “I don’t understand it. Who would do anything like that? It seems peculiar.
“Believe me it wasn’t Mikaela, or Mikaela’s people. They’re not those kind of people. They’re really upstanding people. I really think if somebody did that, it was just a prank from somebody outside or somebody who had a beef against Sandy.”
Watch the Mikaela Mayer vs Sandy Ryan rematch live on Sky Sports Action from midnight on Sunday morning.
