By Edward Chaykovsky
According to middleweight contender Chris Eubank Jr., he beat up James DeGale so bad in a sparring session that Olympic gold medal winner threw him out of his gym.
Eubank (22-1, 17KOs) is scheduled to defend his British middleweight title against the unbeaten Tom Doran at The O2 Arena on the undercard of Anthony Joshua vs. Dominic Breazeale. He wants to get in the ring with WBC/WBA/IBO/IBF middleweight champion Gennady 'GGG' Golovkin in the fall.
DeGale, who holds the IBF championship at the super middleweight limit of 168-pounds, is moving in the direction of a unification with WBC champ Badou Jack in the fall.
Eubank Jr. claims that he was never going to make the incident public, because he embarrassed DeGale in such an overwhelming way in the gym - but says DeGale was so disrespectful after their spar that he felt it was necessary to let everyone know exactly what happened when they traded punches in the gym.
Both fighters are promoted by Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport.
"The story is that I was invited to his gym a few years back to spar with him. I went in there and schooled him, beat him up. He wasn't happy about it - he was embarrassed and upset," Eubank Jr. told Sky Sports.
"After the sparring session, he basically tried to kick me out of his gym. Because of how disrespectful he was towards me and my father at his gym, I decided to let people know what had gone down in sparring that day.
"Usually, what happens in the gym stays in the gym and I never talk about what goes on in my sparring sessions but because of the way he acted, I decided to let everybody know. Since then, we've always clashed."
