Nick Kyrgios will not entertain a bout with fellow Australian tennis pro Bernard Tomic
Nick Kyrgios during his match against Sebastian Baez at the BNP Paribas Open on March 10, 2022. © Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images
Tennis motormouth Nick Kyrgios has pulled out of a potential boxing match with “dead broke” nemesis Bernard Tomic.
A war of words between the two spanning years has reached its peak in recent weeks, with world number 417 Tomic first offering to take on Kyrgios in a $1 million tennis match to settle their feud.
When Kyrgios showed little interest in this, Tomic then suggested a winner-takes-all boxing match with the same amount of money on the line.
Yet Kyrgios isn’t keen on that prospect either and claims to have “bigger fish to fry” than the man he has described as “the most hated athlete in Australia”.
Speaking to the Courier Mail, Kyrgios said that Tomic is “not very good” or “relevant” anymore and claimed that the 29-year-old “obviously” has financial issues.
Kyrgios believes that Tomic has been “extremely disrespectful” by coming out and attacking him, recalling that his family stood up for Tomic with Kyrgios even paying for his flights back from Shanghai once “because he had no money”.
“When he’s challenging me for boxing matches – like first of all, I don’t know who’s going to put up $1 million for him because he’s dead broke,” Kyrgios explained.
“Second of all, I have bigger fish to fry at the moment. I’m trying to get ready for Wimbledon, [for the] US Open.
“I’ve got off court contracts, tournaments still pay me to show up, and I don’t think that’s happening for him at the moment. But maybe one day, I would love to challenge him in there. I feel like I’ve got him on fitness,” the 27-year-old stressed. Kyrgios showed empathy for Tomic, saying that he is “going through a lot of struggles right now” as someone that had “an extremely brutal upbringing”.
“But I feel like he lives in the past now, it’s time to take ownership of your life, show some accountability,” Kyrgios demanded, before stating a belief that Tomic’s boxing call out has been inspired by YouTube prankster-turned-fighter Jake Paul.
“If someone calls me out, I will obviously respond. But at the same time, I know that he’s got some deep-rooted issues and I feel sorry for him,” Kyrgios reiterated, suggesting that the pair can “literally talk it out” over a coffee instead.
“I’m not afraid of feelings, figuring stuff out and having a man-to-man conversation. But intellectually, he’s probably not the most switched on bloke,” Kyrgios concluded on the matter.
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Deciding to skip the ongoing French Open this year, Kyrgios is planning his comeback at Wimbledon later in the summer and believes that basketball, which he described as a form of “meditation”, has helped him in his preparations for SW19.
“I just want to keep proving that you can do it your way, that’s it. These boys don’t care who I am,” he said of his training colleagues.
“They just want to run out here and hoop, compete, we just push each other every day.”
