LONDON – At Thursday’s Bellator Europe 6 media day, all eyes were on two competitors not competing on this weekend’s card.
Before the interview proceedings even started, a scuffle broke out between Bellator Europe 7 headliner James Gallagher and fellow Bellator featherweight Mike Kimbel.
In a wild sequence of events, Gallagher allegedly walked up to Kimbel and punched him square in the face. Who alleges this? Gallagher himself.
Why did Gallagher strike Kimbel? The brash Irish up-and-comer gave his side of the story when speaking to MMA Junkie. According to Gallagher, Kimbel had long talked trash about him. However, things escalated when Kimbel made a vulgar joke about Gallagher’s mother on Instagram.
“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.’”
Talk all you want trying to hype a fight, Gallagher said. However, when you talk about somebody’s mother, that’s where he draws the line. Disrespecting women is the lowest of the low in Gallagher’s eyes.
“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.”
Despite the heat between the two featherweights, Gallagher asserted he’d never fight Kimbel in an actual MMA bout. However, if Kimbel ever says anything else about Gallagher’s mother, the Irishman indicated fisticuffs will come outside the cage once again.
“I will never ever fight Mike Kimbel in an MMA contest – ever,” Gallagher said. “We can leave it at that now. … If I’m somewhere, don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t be around me. Don’t say nothing about me. Get on your way, do your thing, and that’s it. There is no revenge that can satisfy me about what he said about my mother.
“… The biggest (regret) is that I didn’t get him in a room on my own and that there was people here able to hold him back and hold me back. That’s the only regret that I’ve got. Nothing else. He’s a lucky, lucky man – a kid. A stupid little kid. He’s lucky.”
Watch the video above to hear Gallagher’s full breakdown of the Kimbel altercation.
James Gallagher: Mike Kimbel's vulgar comment about my mother led to Bellator media day scuffle
