Martyn Ford felt he had to call off his fight with the Iranian Hulk after watching his rival break down in tears before a press conference between the pair.
The Brit, who has been dubbed the 'world's scariest man', was due to face Sajjad Gharibi in a boxing match on April 30 at The O2 arena in London. But he pulled out after going head-to-head with his opponent in Dubai as part of an altercation that saw the pair get physical.
Gharibi admitted after the pair's embarrassing face-off, where he was easily brushed off by Ford, that he was feeling suicidal, and the fight was ultimately cancelled. And now Ford has said that after seeing his opponent in such a bad state he felt guilty going through with the big money fight.
"I said to the promoters not to put me face-to-face with him until we fight," Ford said during an appearance on the Disruptors podcast with Rob Moore. "Because I'm going to fight and I don't want to do that in a gym or whatever.
"So they put us face-to-face and it was a c***-up on the promotional side if I'm honest. It should never have happened, it was the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong environment with no security and it was just stupid.
"Then the second face-off happened where he tried to take me down and that for me was when I started to become more concerned about the damage that would be done to him. It was very obvious and clear that there was never going to be a fair fight.
"After that, we were supposed to do a press conference and I saw him and he was crying, he was broke and he didn't want to go out, or fight, he didn't want to do anything. He was bad. He then put a post out on social media that he took down a few hours later on his stories saying that he wanted to kill himself."
The fight appeared doomed from that face-off when the pair opted to push the date back by three weeks, before it was ultimately called off entirely. Ford claims there were other issues with the finances of the event, but ultimately he was concerned for Gharibi.
Were you disappointed when Martyn Ford vs the Iranian Hulk was called off? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!
"There was issues with payment with the organisation, which was neither here nor there," he continued. "So we've got a combination of four or five things that have happened.
"Now after all of this has happened, he still wants to fight. But he seems to think we can arrange a fight that wouldn't necessarily be as real as a real fight.
"So he comes to terms that something like that isn't going to happen, then his management were being very fishy, to say the least. We get back to the UK, I watched all the videos, he had an interview on TV where he cried.
"He got hammered on social media, his parents came out and disowned him so I phoned up the organisation and said 'I can't fight this guy'. I don't want to be responsible for this kid being bullied and taking his own life because that's the only way it would have ended."
