Gallen challenges Sonny Bill to fight in a locked room ‘in our undies’

Paul Gallen is so keen to settle his bitter feud with Sonny Bill Williams once and for all that he offered to fight him on Monday, in private, wearing nothing but their underwear.

“It would be nice just to remove all these chairs and get it done right now,” Gallen said at a press conference to promote their long-awaited boxing showdown at Qudos Bank Arena on Wednesday.

“I’d love to be locked in a room with you and see who walks out. I’d love it. No rules. No rules - in our undies.”

Instead, the two code-crossing warhorses had to settle for trading insults, at least until they step in the ring for a bout that is expected to earn each fighter around $1 million and will be shown live and exclusively on Stan, owned by Nine, which also owns this masthead.

After a few verbal jabs for starters, Gallen started unloading some haymakers, in particular querying whether Williams was charging restaurants and cafes for social-media food reviews.

“You are a scumbag,” Gallen declared. “You are a scumbag, mate.

Paul Gallen offers some forthright advice to Sonny Bill Williams at Monday’s press conference.Credit: Steven Siewert

“You are a disgusting human being. You walk around like you help the community and do this and that for people, and you go and charge small businesses thousands of dollars to help them. You’re a piece of shit.”

The real bone of contention between the pair, however, remains the issue of drug use, both earlier in their lives and in the lead-up to this fight.

SBW has repeatedly referenced Gallen’s involvement in the Cronulla peptides scandal more than a decade ago – dubbed the “blackest day in Australian sport” – while Gallen responded on Monday by again slamming Williams for revealing in his autobiography that he took social drugs early in his league career.

“He wants to talk about drugs,” Gallen said. “This bloke’s an admitted drug user. Admitted drug user. You’ve admitted to using drugs. You’ve admitted to using drugs to cope.”

Williams replied “there’s a difference between performance-enhancing drugs and drugs for personal use”, but that was given short shrift by Gallen.

Sonny Bill Williams says he is “laser focused” on beating Paul Gallen in their long-awaited showdown.Credit: Steven Siewert

“Unfortunately for you, there’s not,” Gallen said. “If they’re found in your system, they are classed as performance-enhancing drugs ... you used them to cope with the stress of the game.

“That’s cheating. No matter how you want to look at it, that’s cheating.”

Gallen maintains that he still doesn’t know what he was prescribed during the Cronulla peptides scandal, because it was dispensed by the club’s medical staff. And he insists that he offered to be drug-tested in the lead-up to this fight.

“I said to certain media people in this room, the first thing and the only thing this dope’s going to go on about is drug-testing because he’s a stupid prick,” Gallen said. “He’s got nothing else to say. He’s an idiot. That’s all you’ve got.”

Sonny Bill Williams and Paul Gallen pose with Danny Green.Credit: Steven Siewert

Williams, for his part, said he had requested two minute-rounds, instead of the usual three-minute intervals, “basically because there has been no drug-testing about”.

“I’ve heard a lot of rumours … he’s a person that can’t be trusted, at all,” he said, adding that shorter rounds might actually benefit Gallen, who at 43 will be the elder combatant by four years.

“I think he’s had three or four fights of two-minute rounds, and I’ve never done it,” he said.

Naturally, Gallen wasn’t buying that line.

“He wants two-minute rounds because it suits him,” Gallen said. “The thing about Sonny, you look back at what he did at the Bulldogs [walking out on the club mid-contract] many years ago, he did that because it suited him.

“We all want more money, we all want better contracts, but the bloke walked out on his teammates overnight. The bloke’s a disgraceful human being … two-minute rounds totally suits him down to the ground - a big, powerful athlete, absolutely suits him.”

There will be six fights on the SBW-Gallen undercard, one of which will feature Rahim Mundine - son of Anthony - against Fijian southpaw Joe Vatusaqata.

All the action in a stacked SBW v Gallen card will be streaming live and exclusive on Stan Pay-Per-View on Wednesday 16 July.