Kicking off Fight Week for their championship rematch, Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan went face-to-face. The pair battle it out on Saturday, March 29, live on ESPN from the Bleaulive Theater at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.
Two-weight champion Mayer (20-2, 5 KOs) of Woodland Hills, CA, puts her WBO welterweight title on the line. Ryan (7-2-1, 3 KOs) of the UK looks to avenge the defeat and reclaim the strap that she lost by majority decision in their first fight last September in New York.
“She thinks she’s so tricky. We know that’s how she is,” Mikaela Mayer said. “We know she’s going to say that because she doesn’t like to engage anyway, and neither does her coach. Her coach wants to hide and stay in the shadows, and he’s probably telling her, ‘Don’t engage.'”
“I’m just doing what I have to do. I don’t do anything but speak the facts, and I’m doing my part to sell this fight. Everyone is coming together and working hard to give her the rematch that she wanted. The least she can do is show up and help the promotion of this fight.”
Sandy Ryan said, “You can see she loves the attention, the talk. When you don’t give her that, it triggers her. So, she’s saying, ‘Oh, she’s scared.’ I’m not scared. We just did a faceoff. This is for the media. This is what’s in the contract, and we’re here. She loves to talk and loves the media. When you don’t give her that, it makes her talk all kinds of nonsense.”
The co-main event fighters, Brian Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) of Decatur, GA, and Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1, 19 KOs) of Puerto Rico also went face-to-face. Norman Jr. defends his WBO welterweight title, while Cuevas makes his first attempt to become champion.
Among the Mayer vs Ryan 2 prelims, Brooklyn native Bruce Carrington (14-0, 8 KOs) and Jose Enrique Vivas (23-3, 12 KOs) of Mexico meet in a final eliminator for the WBC featherweight title. Plus, Emiliano Vargas (12-0, 10 KOs) of Oxnard, CA, and Giovannie Gonzalez (20-7-2, 15 KOs) of Lodi, CA square off at super lightweight.