British heavyweight kickboxer Chi Lewis-Parry has refuted claims that illness forced him out of his fight against Hesdy Gerges at GLORY 39.
Following the conclusion of the GLORY lightweight title fight on the GLORY 39 SuperFight Series, the promotion released a statement claiming that Lewis-Parry was not well enough to compete at the event in Brussels, Belgium.
However, since that statement, conflicting reports have detailed that Lewis-Parry was not ill and the issue was down to the GLORY Kickboxing gloves.
The initial reports surfaced when MMAPlanet.nl reporter Kris Dekker tweeted about an issue with Lewis-Parry not being able to fit his hands into the GLORY gloves.
MMA Plus confirmed this report with Gerges’s coach Thom Harinck, who asserted that Lewis-Parry had told him the issue was with the gloves and not down to illness, as the promotion had stated.
Following the end of the GLORY 39 SuperFight Series, the American Kickboxing Academy fighter took to his Facebook page to also confirm he was not ill but did not go into detail over the true reason for his fight being cancelled.
Since the Brit’s public statement, MMA Plus have spoken to a source close to the Lewis-Parry camp who has confirmed that the gloves provided by GLORY were too small. The source also claimed that the promotion tried for approximately two hours to find replacement gloves, but were unable to do so and thus why the fight was called off.
Reportedly, this is not the first time “Chopper” has had issues with the gloves, with a similar problem believed to have taken place in his last fight against Anthony McDonald at GLORY 33 in New Jersey.
What remains unclear at this time is why GLORY released the statement claiming Chi was ill, when in fact, it is highly likely they were privy to the information regarding the issues with the glove sizes.
MMA Plus have reached out to GLORY Kickboxing for a comment on the matter but have yet to receive a response as of time of publication.
