The incident took me by surprise but I was in fight mode and it didn’t happen to me, so I wasn’t flustered.

If someone had thrown paint on me I would have slapped paint on the ass of my fight shorts and got on with it.

I was concerned that she was going to pull out – her team were really getting her going about it.

There was a clip of her coach Kay Koroma in the locker room screaming at her to pull out of the fight which I thought was super suspicious. That was weird to me and out of character for him.

I really don’t think it was the paint that threw her off her game but her team, who made it a bigger deal than it had to be.

Obviously I don’t want that to happen and I hope it doesn’t happen going into this fight. It could have been called off and, after two years of busting my butt to get back in that position, that was the last thing I wanted.

As for ‘paint-gate’ being used to promote the rematch, I was surprised the Top Rank team used the paint on the promotion posters – but this is entertainment.

I didn’t have any say in it. If I had done anything like that, my manager would have had my neck as he tries to keep me professional.

I didn’t know about it until the poster came out and I said, ‘do they have red paint on Sandy?’

I was just as taken aback as anyone else, but it’s kind of funny.