Mikaela Mayer feels betrayed.
But now she has a massive opportunity for vengeance.
Mayer (19-2, 5 KOs) earlier this year fired her longtime trainer Kay Koroma — who had been in her corner for eight years, overseeing her rise from a Team USA Olympian in 2016 to a unified super featherweight champion and pound-for-pound great — after he began working with Sandy Ryan (7-1-1, 3 KOs), one of Mayer’s rival’s in the welterweight division.
Mayer, 34, will challenge Ryan for her WBO welterweight title as the main event on Top Rank’s card Friday night (10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
“After being with me for that long, I do expect some loyalty,” Mayer told The Post about Koroma. “And if you’re not gonna give it to me, I expect some honesty. … It’s just such a snakey way to go about things. Coach Kay has lost a handful of fighters and I see why.”
She claims Koroma told her he was bringing in the 31-year-old Ryan before Mayer’s previous fight, a split-decision loss to Natasha Jonas in January for the latter’s IBF welterweight belt.
Knowing she was upset about it, Koroma told Mayer that Ryan would only be training with one of his assistants.
But Mayer, a Los Angeles native, then saw Ryan working with Koroma in the gym and realized she was being told one thing by Koroma and Ryan another.
Friday night at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. X/@MikaelaMayer1
“The lies and the inconsistency and the lack of transparency really got me thinking, ‘What am I gonna do?’ And I didn’t do it impulsively, because I know it’s a really big decision to uproot my situation at this stage of my career and go find someone better or worse, I didn’t know what the options were,” Mayer said.
“I started realizing I wanted a fight with Sandy. She is saying we’re not gonna fight. Coach K is telling Matchroom [Promotions] that he will only train Sandy if we don’t fight. And then I’m like ‘who’s vouching for me? Who is pushing for me? Are they navigating around me to protect Sandy now?’ That was really like a wake-up call where I was like ‘OK, now my career is gonna be affected if I stay in this situation.’ If I walk away, we can make this fight happen. And that’s exactly what I did. I walked away, and within a few weeks the fight was made.”
Mayer pivoted to Kofi Jantuah as her trainer and also still has Al Mitchell, who has been with her throughout her career, in her corner.
She called the switch from Koroma to Jantuah a “blessing in disguise.”
“[Ryan] came and she forced me to make this decision and to find a different option, and I landed a better option,” Mayer said. “100 times better. That doesn’t normally happen. I’m in a great situation. Now, she’s in the f–ked-up situation.
“Even things that Kay tried to teach me, I realized he didn’t know how to teach me. But Kofi does.”
Mayer’s loss to Jonas was highly controversial, and she is adamant that she deserved to win the bout.
It was her first fight at the 147-pound welterweight division, all the way up from the 130-pound super featherweight division where she won the WBO and IBF titles.
Now with more time to adjust to the weight, Mayer feels ready to complete her quest to become a two-division champion.
If she does, it will have been worth all the recent turmoil.
“After the two years that I’ve been through, this is going to mean so much more,” Mayer said. “For the longest time, everyone is like ‘everything happens for a reason.’ I’m sitting here the last two years like ‘what is the reason? Why is this happening to me?’ I really thought I was unlucky, like ‘there is nothing good coming from this, this can’t be good in any way.’ But now I’m sort of seeing it all come together.”
