Mikaela Mayer vs Sandy Ryan: Briton Sandy Ryan relives her paint attack in New York

I was heading to the venue as usual on a fight night, meeting my team in reception and getting ready to go to the venue.

Suddenly, I got hit with a can of paint and when I looked up there was a guy running back to his car. You could call it a hit and run.

That was three hours before the fight took place – it wasn’t the usual fight night.

I didn’t see the person coming. I looked down, saw red. It was a bit of a shock at the time.

Everyone around me must have been in shock because no-one chased him. It would have been a lot different if my brother Dave was there – and he will be there on Saturday.

I didn’t see anything suspicious but there were two people from Mikaela’s team lingering around the bar and at reception when we were coming down to the car.

We didn’t think anything of it at the time, though, because we were all staying in the same hotel.

I went back up to my room to change and shower and then I had a security guard with me when we got back to the car to go to the venue.

It started to feel like a movie because the security guard was on his phone saying, ‘I’ve got Sandy Ryan in the car, we’ll be arriving in three minutes. Have all the doors ready’.

When he got off the phone he said to me, ‘don’t get out of the car, I’ll open your door and I want you to stay on my left shoulder to walk into the venue’.