YouTube star Ryan Taylor was "infuriated" after his second effort at boxing was cancelled weeks out from the fight, claiming his rival Slim Albaher lied about having a detached retina.
Taylor was due to face Albaher, an influencer from New York, in London earlier this month, but the bout was cancelled after the American was left with a detached retina during a brawl between the two. They had just participated in a pre-fight launch press conference when they ran into one another at a hotel, and continued their verbal altercation.
And without security around the incident got physical, with Albaher releasing footage that showed Taylor punching his rival as his coach; Bellator fighter Kane Mousah, held him back. The American's footage was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, while Taylor generally remained quiet about the issue, aside from a few jabs on Instagram.
Having been disqualified from his debut fight for head-butting his opponent DK Money back in March, Taylor is now taking on a considerably bigger challenge. He faces professional MMA fighter Anthony Taylor, a Bellator star who has spent time in camp with Jake Paul, in Dubai on Sunday night in the co-main event of Wicked 'n' Bad's next pay-per-view event.
"Third time's a charm," Taylor told Mirror Fighting in an exclusive interview after announcing his return to the ring. "Third time, we're going to make it happen. I was really annoyed about the second one, I was really infuriated.
"I put in a lot of work in camp, I was cutting a lot of weight for that one because the previous fight was at a weight I was already at but I had to lose 10kg (22lb) so I had to cut a lot. Luckily in Dubai that's quite easy, it's hot there so you can sweat it off you.
"I was really annoyed about the second one, but this one now I'm really looking forward to. I've had three or four weeks training which is devoted to just this one. Let's get it cracking.
"The DK situation? I don't know what happened. I had two weeks to train for the fight and literally that is all I can say. Me and him have spoken since then, everything's cool it is what it is and we move on. One thing for sure is that it's YouTube boxing, it is what it is, it's entertainment and it's not professional.
"My good friends like Anthony Joshua and stuff who are now in really hard training camps, that is a professional boxer. The reason why people are so tuned in to this YouTube boxing is because it is entertainment, so if I head-butted someone in the ring? I'm sorry, I'm not a professional boxer and that for sure won't be happening again.
"And the Slim stuff, he was talking a lot of stuff for a long time and a lot of his audience have said that they're glad that he got humbled. Now he tried to take another fight, he lied about having injuries that he didn't have, I personally just think that he felt the power of the right hand and he didn't want it."
Taylor felt that the incident was no more than extra promotion to push the fight, which had just been announced at a heated press conference. But Albaher insisted that doctor's forced him out of the event, and showed off a gnarly injury in a YouTube video after the fact.
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"To me, I think it was good promotion for the fight," Taylor explained. "He instigated a situation where he's in the hotel lobby with his cameras and his people, even though he said we jumped him. It was me and Kane in the hotel, that's not jumping anyone, we were just going to the room by ourselves.
"Why would you be in the hotel lobby waiting for the situation to arise when we've already been in the press conference, we've done the head-to-head, we've already spoken. He instigated the situation, but now it's third time lucky."
The Walsall native has come in for considerable criticism over the past few months after following up his initial head-butt antics with injuring Albaher. But he feels that people have been too quick to judge, particularly noting former friends such as KSI who have turned their backs on him.
He added: "I feel like what people think about me online and what people are saying about me, especially people who don't know me in person, they're so quick to judge. They judge off what situations and altercations they can see via video and the online source that we're so consumed by now.
"It's all images through the phone, Instagram, TikTok and all that stuff, and then people who I've done stuff with in the past like KSI, for example, were quick to flip the script. He said 'it's bad' or whatever, these people talked bad about me.
"So I feel like if I get back in the ring now and I fought someone who wasn't challenging or someone hard to beat, if I got a quick knockdown everyone would be like 'that wasn't a fair fight'. With this one, they'll at least have to say that I've gone in with an opponent much tougher than me, it's a much more difficult fight than any of these YouTubers that we've talked about before.
"What can you say after that? We're going to see what happens in the ring, and either way you have to respect any man that gets inside the ring. It's a battle, you're going in there to punch each other's faces."
Ryan Taylor fights Anthony Taylor in the co-main event of Iranian Hulk vs Kazakh Titan on Sunday night in Dubai. Fans can watch the fight on pay-per-view for £7 here.
