Following their heated press conference, junior middleweight titleholder Tony Harrison fields a few questions about his preparations for his upcoming rematch with Jermell Charlo. Check out some excerpt below...
Harrison on how he’s ankle is holding up following his injury:
“I mean, it’s um, I mean it’s doing what it do. It’s holding up for now. I can’t speak for further down the line but it’s holding up for now. Training is intense, I took my training out to St. Pete — I’m in St. Pete with Keith Thurman.
“It’s amazing, man. The gym is real small, compact, reminds you of an old-school gym. It’s real hot, I got the sparring partners with me...It’s gonna be a long next five, six weeks but it’ll be worth it in the end.”
On how adamant Charlo is that he faked his injury and, believing he was robbed in their first fight, and how he thinks that’ll play a role in this rematch:
“When I’m in his head, I’m in his conscious. I’m the little guy speaking in the back of his head — I’m dancing in the back of that motherfucker too, like I’m diddy bopping in the back of his head right now. So whatever he’s saying, ‘I fake the injury,’ cool. I’m cool with that. Whatever to get the mental aspect of this fight, ‘cause fighting is about mental. He’s mentally weak, he’s a mentally weak person.
“So whatever he says. Matter of fact I’ma say that today: I faked it. I faked it to come right here in December because he don’t like December. I beat yo ass last December so to get it back going another December, fuck it, I faked it.
“If I can play mind games with him — which is easy to do, it’s easy to play mind games with females — so I’m just playing mind games with him. It’s cool.
“He fight with emotions on his sleeve. He’s always emotional...It’s kinda like when you watch Batman fight Bane, and Bane like ‘you fight with too much emotion, you’ll never beat me like that.’”
On if he’s worried about scorecards should it go the distance condering the controversy over the first result:
“Real men don’t make excuses, man...The judges here to do their job. They got two eyes like everybody else so everybody can score the fight a different way and they probably will score the fight a different way the next time...I’m a champion for a reason, I’m not here to make no excuses.
“He had 12 rounds to make the decision whatever he wanted the decision to be, the knockout, whatever he wanted he had 12 rounds to do it. He never made an adjustment, he never did nothing different, it was panic and chaos every time I looked in their corner.
“He’s nowhere near physically stronger than me. He had 12 rounds to hit me with his best shots and I’m like ‘wow, why is all these guys going down?’ For me, I just think it’s the mental edge. I just think mentally, I can’t let a sucker beat me...there’s no way I can let that kinda guy beat me.”