"We have no promotional ties, and thank God I've finally gotten away from 50 Cent," stated former world champion Billy Dib, who made it clear that he's more than happy about no longer being tied to his former promoter, 50 Cent. According to Dib, it was the worst career move that he's ever made in his life and it had a great impact on his performances in the ring.
"It was very disheartening. Sleepless nights. You wake up for phone calls and the guy would never answer his phone. It was possibly the worst career move that I've made in my life," Dib explained during a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph. "My career was skyrocketing, things were going amazing, and then unfortunately - and when I say unfortunately, I really do mean unfortunately - I signed for 50 Cent, who basically knew nothing about the sport of boxing."
Dib signed a 3-year promotional contract with 50 Cent back in 2012. He was under the impression that 50 Cent was partnering with boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather to form TMT Promotions, telling FightHype.com at the time, "I have been in regular contact with both 50 Cent and Floyd. It is great to be signed with TMT and I'm super excited about the future under the TMT Promotional banner." After a public feud, however, Mayweather and 50 Cent went their separate ways, leaving Dib signed to 50 Cent's SMS Promotions instead.
That was the start of a rocky road for Dib's career, going 4-3 in his last 7 fights and suffering two TKO losses in the process. Dib gave the following take on his experience with 50 Cent's SMS Promotions:
"When you get promised something and it's not delivered, that disheartens you a little bit."
"And that's what was happening to me. I was being promised certain things and I was only being delivered a quarter of what was promised."
"So that became very disheartening, and then you find that you're fighting for money and you're [not] fighting for the love of the sport anymore, and that's what happened to me."
"All [I] cared about was fighting for world titles and defending them. It was for the love of the sport; it wasn't about money. The money was going to follow."
"But then when you get promised a certain amount of money and you don't get paid that certain amount of money, you start becoming very disheartened and that's exactly what happened to me."
"I became turned off the sport. I wasn't working as hard anymore."
Now that he's free of 50 Cent's SMS Promotions, Dib is looking to get his career back on track. He's currently scheduled to face Sukkasem Kietyongyuth in a super featherweight bout on February 26 at the Emporium Function Centre in Sydney, Australia.