TikTok star Simple Simon admits he was badly beaten up during a sparring session in preparation for his grudge fight with Ed Matthews.
The 52-year-old, whose real name is Simon Colbran, has almost 400,000 followers on TikTok and became embroiled in a feud with fellow content creator Matthews earlier this year. The pair agreed to settle their differences in a boxing fight and will headline on July 16 event at The O2 Indigo with a celebrity-stacked undercard.
Colbran, who has no fighting experience, admitted his body has struggled to cope with the intense preparations for his ring debut. The father of five was thrown into the deep end at his local boxing gym in Tunbridge Wells and was left bloodied after a gruelling sparring session.
“Last month, I thought I really needed to get a proper boxing camp, so I went to my local gym. [Rusthall Boxing Club]," Colbran told Mirror Fighting . "My coach really put me through my paces, got me sparring and put me in the ring with people a lot better than me. I sparred with this 17-year-old, who was Southern champion three times, he just played around with me.
"Then my coach put me against someone a lot bigger than me and I got beaten up really bad. I had blood all over me, my nose was all over the place and two black eyes but I needed that. That’s what you need to expect."
Colbran and Matthews came to blows when promoting their fight at a press conference in London last month. Matthews infuriated Colbran when he offered to gift his daughter a sex toy, with security being forced to separate the pair after they started throwing punches at each other.
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Colbran said he plans to tone down his training sessions during fight week after pushing himself to the limit recently. He added: “I’ve gone through some difficult times to be honest. I’m 52-year-old and my body is like ‘what on earth are you doing putting me through this’.
"It’s been tough, I’ve had three periods where I’ve really suffered with anxiety and I was just shattered. I remember lying on my bed one day at 4pm absolutely shattered and I didn’t get out of bed until 10am the next morning. I was just so tired."
