The Sandy Ryan vs Mikaela Mayer Saga Continues On Social Media

Friday night at the Theater inside Madison Square Garden hosted a women’s WBO welterweight title fight that will easily be the front-runner for Women’s Fight of the Year. Sandy Ryan (7-2-1, 3 KOs) and Mikaela Mayer (20-2, 5 KOs) gave it their all, but it was a fight fueled with real hatred towards each other and one that almost didn’t happen. Hours before the fight, as Ryan walked out of the hotel to head to the Garden, someone threw a can of red paint at her, which got all over her. The situation was traumatizing for Ryan, as shown by her body language in the locker room before the fight. Ryan still entered the ring that night and put her title on the line but came up short in a majority decision loss which costed her the WBO title she earned in March. Although we are a few days removed from the incident, more information has been released, with Mayer’s team immediately deflecting.

On Monday morning, Ryan went on X and posted the following message.

Then George Ruiz, Mayer’s manager, released the following statement in response to the post sent out by Ryan.

The fight was extremely close, but there is no denying that Ryan was still very much in shock when Mark Kriegel interviewed her in the locker room before the fight. Everyone began to ask themselves what would have happened if that incident had not occurred before the fight. Was it the difference in the fight that night? Mayer doesn’t appear to be in any rush for a rematch, as she deflected the idea during the in-ring post-fight interview by saying the wants to go after the other champions in the division. Ryan and her promoter, Eddie Hearn, are pushing hard for the rematch while the incident remains an NYPD investigation. Ryan claims Mayer put it together to rattle her while Mayer denies being involved.

There aren’t many interesting storylines in women’s boxing, but this one has the attention of boxing fans. There is an opportunity to “strike while the iron is hot” for the rematch, so it’ll be interesting to see if Top Rank and Matchroom can get it done or will this lead to Ryan and Mayer going into separate bouts that won’t be as interesting.

Abraham Gonzalez

Abraham Gonzalez is the founder of FightsATW. His journalistic work has been published and used across several platforms to include online, network TV and promotional companies. He is an American Public University alumnus and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA). Abraham was the Managing Editor for NYFights, Big Fight Weekend, contributed to FanSidedMMA and ProBoxTV.

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