Junior welterweight contender Ohara Davies (16-1, 13 KOs) has been in the headlines lately, but for all of the wrong reasons.
Davies is known for his trash talking attitude, but recently he went a step too far.
Davies suffered his first career defeat last July, when he was stopped by Josh Taylor. He bounced back in September, after battering undefeated Tom Farrell in six rounds.
Last week, Davies' comments on social media forced his promoter, Eddie Hearn, to remove the boxer from a scheduled February 3 card at the O2 Arena in London - headlined by the cruiserweight showdown between heated rivals Lawrence Okolie and Isaac Chamberlain.
Davies was goading his rival Tommy Coyle by declaring the Sun is his favourite newspaper and tweeting "BuyTheSun".
The 28-year-old fighter Coyle has been an outspoken critic of the newspaper, which has long been shunned on Merseyside over its controversial coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 in which 96 Liverpool football fans died.
Davies tweeted out - "The Sun is my favourite newspaper ... I will wear their logo on my shorts and they will work with Eddie Hearn to promote my fight one day. After I knock you out my first interview will be with the Sun," before adding "#BuyTheSun".
The statements prompted Hearn to pull him from the show.
According to Davies, he created an alter-ego and lost what he claims is his "real self."
"I feel like I have lost the real me," Davies exclusively told Sky Sports. "Since the build-up to the Josh Taylor fight it hasn't been in me, and I have felt like I needed to act in a certain way.
"The Derry Mathews fight humbled me. Since then, it has all been an act. It has been forced. I meant everything I said in the build-up to fight Mathews but, since then, I have become an act. I haven't meant anything.
"The last time I enjoyed [the act] was before the Mathews fight. Before the Josh Taylor fight I didn't feel like acting arrogant, and people noticed how I didn't say much. I felt like it wasn't me anymore. That was a phase that I wanted to leave behind but I felt like I had to keep up my image. Then I didn't want to say the things that I said to Tom Farrell, I wanted to be humble. When I won I didn't say anything.
"People think they know me, but they don't. People think I'm more arrogant than I actually am. I've never had issues with other fighters in my gym - if I'm the way you perceive me to be, how could I have lasted so long? People have tried to paint me as a bad guy but I'm not."
