Derry Mathews: Flanagan doesn’t fancy this fight

By Boxing News - 01/28/2016 - Comments

mathews3By Scott Gilfoid: WBO interim 135lb champion Derry Mathews (38-9-2, 20 KOs) thinks unbeaten WBO lightweight champion Terry Flanagan (29-0, 12 KOs) doesn’t fancy a fight against him, and that’s why he postponed their previously scheduled February 13th fight in putting it off until March 12th at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK.

Officially, Flanagan came down with a case of tendonitis in his left hook, which caused the fight to be postponed until 3/12. However, Mathews, 32, just flat out thinks that Flanagan doesn’t want to take the fight.

There are rumors that Flanagan is hoping to get a unification fight against WBA lightweight champion Anthony Crolla. The only way that fight could happen is if Flanagan can convince the WBO to let him bypass the fight against Mathews in order to face Crolla in a unification match.

Crolla would need to do the same thing in getting the World Boxing Association to let him steer around the incredibly dangerous and talented Ismael Barroso. It makes a lot of sense for Crolla to face Flanagan in a unification fight because the money would likely be better than in a title defense against the dangerous Barroso. But more than that, if Crolla is going to be beaten, it would seem like a better idea for him to get beaten by Flanagan because he’ll get a nice payday in losing.

“He [Flanagan] doesn’t fancy this fight in Liverpool, even his manager didn’t fancy it and come fight night there’ll be nowhere for him to run; it’ll be just me and him in that ring,” said Matthews via skysports.com. “He’s trying to pull a fast one pretending he’s injured but he’s just delaying the inevitable; I’m taking that belt with both hands.”

It’s hard to say what’s going on with Flanagan. But I guess if he bails on the March 12th fight and instead takes on Crolla in a unification fight, then you can kind of put one and one together. It would be similar to what Wladimir Klitschko did five years ago when he bailed on a scheduled title defense against Dereck Chisora to fight then WBA heavyweight champion David Haye in a unification match in 2011.

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Wladimir suffered a couple of muscle pulls of his midsection that caused his scheduled fight against Chisora to be delayed, and then the next thing you know it, Wladimir pulls out of the Chisora fight altogether and winds up facing Haye instead. Chisora was none too pleased about it, and he let Wladimir know how he felt about it when he spat water into his face when the two of them were inside the ring before Chisora’s title fight against Wladimir’s older brother Vitali Klitschko in February 2012.

“If he [Flanagan] is genuinely injured then I wish him all the luck with his recovery but if he’s trying to play mind games then he has picked the wrong man to play them with. I’ve got the strongest mind in the business and I’ve seen it all before. Silly mind games won’t work on me, I’m fully focused on becoming the new champion in my home town.”



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