Tommy Fury's next boxing opponent Paul Bamba appeared to struggle with MMA fighter Dillon Danis in sparring footage that has re-emerged this week.
The 5-2 American faces 8-0 Fury in the co-main event of Floyd Mayweather's exhibition bout with YouTube star Deji in Dubai next month. Fans were unimpressed with the announcement after it was leaked that promoters wanted the Brit to face former UFC welterweight champion Woodley, but instead organised a fight between he and Bamba.
Born in Puerto Rico but fighting out of New York, Bamba began boxing professionally last year and has amassed a winning record, just the third of Fury's nine opponents to boast such. However, his fights are hard to come by online and his record includes a TKO loss to an 0-4 fighter as well as a split decision in his sole Stateside bout to a 1-4 journeyman.
And old footage of the American that has resurfaced appears to show him struggling through a sparring session with MMA fighter and Conor McGregor teammate Dillon Danis. The Bellator star is infamous for his trash talking online, but is known to be a fantastic grappler who struggles on the feet as evidenced in his two career wins against lesser opponents.
Danis has been angling for a move into boxing against one of the Paul brothers Jake and Logan, or British YouTube star KSI. However, he has been marred by injuries, and last month his promoter Scott Coker indicated that he would be heading back to the cage soon, and not the boxing ring.
He has sparred with Bamba in the past, showing his skills in a brief and highly-edited video shared to Instagram in February of last year, and reposted recently by social media news outlet The Bread Batch. At the time, Danis was suffering from a serious knee injury that had kept him from signing to fight the younger Paul that April.
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Danis captioned the footage "this is me with one leg imagine with two when I come back nobody’s safe," and spliced in video of he and Bamba hitting the heavy bag as well as sparring, with the Bellator fighter getting the better of the exchanges. The pair appear to be training at the UFC Gym in New York, and it's hard to gauge how well the session went based on the brief footage.
Bamba was 2-0 at the time after two first-round stoppages in La Terraza Sport Bar in Agua Preita, Mexico. But he would go on to lose his next outing against the 0-4 Abraham Velazquez Salazar next time out and eventually amass a record of 5-2.
The American is a former US Marine, and began boxing professionally after training with celebrities in New York. He faces a massive step-up in competition against Fury, taking on just his second opponent with a winning record and his first who is undefeated at any level.
