James Gallagher has explained what sparked his media day incident with Mike Kimbel and even claims to have punched him.
Gallagher is scheduled to take on Cal Ellenor at Bellator Dublin on Feb. 22, 2020. “The Strabanimal” caught sight of Kimbel during a press event and things got ugly quickly. Gallagher claims to have punched the fellow Bellator featherweight in the face over an Instagram post with a vulgar joke about his mother.
Gallagher Explains Beef With Kimbel
Speaking to MMAJunkie.com, Gallagher gave his side of the incident with Kimbel.
“He’s 2-4 or something like this, but he was talking a lot of (expletive) about me,” Gallagher said. “He was saying my name all the time, running me down, saying a lot of hateful, annoying things. But that’s cool. Say what you want about me. I understand the fight game.
“… Then he took it a bit too far and took a screenshot of a picture off of my Instagram. I posted up a picture of me and my mum coming to visit me in Dublin. I brought her out for dinner, and we got a picture outside the restaurant. I was like, ‘Such a good weekend seeing my mother.’ And he screenshotted it and put it up and goes, ‘She should have swallowed the sperm cells that have made this.’”
Gallagher went on to say that he wasn’t going to let Kimbel get away with the joke.
“For me as a young man, I don’t disrespect women like that,” Gallagher said. “That’s the lowest of the lowest. I would never disrespect any grown woman, nevermind my mother. Not only has he disrespected a woman that I know, he disrespected a woman that I love to bits. A woman that has made me the man I am.
“And that was it. I didn’t say nothing else. I just left it at that. And he asked last month, could he come to Dublin. I said, ‘Yeah, of course you can come to Dublin. You might not get back out, though. You might not.’ Might’ve, might not, whatever. But when I saw him today for the first time, I didn’t say nothing else to him. I just walked up and smacked him with a left hook on the chin, and that was that. Don’t speak about my mother again.”
