I'm a former paedophile hunter... now, I'm set to fight Tommy Fury


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Published: 1 February 2025 Matt Floyd, the Australian boxer with a troubled past, has spoken exclusively to Mail Sport about his ongoing negotiations for a high-profile fight with Tommy Fury. Floyd explained how his representatives have been in talks with Spencer Brown, Tyson Fury's manager, and Mams Taylor, the co-president of KSI's boxing promotion Misfits, about finalising the fight. Standing at six feet tall with a professional record of 15 wins and 1 loss, Floyd is confident he can secure most high-profile bout of his career. But his battle began long before he ever stepped into the ring. Floyd's past is marked by harrowing experiences that shaped the man he would become. His early years were spent in and out of foster care, bouncing between homes before finding himself in a horrific situation at just 10 years old. In an exclusive interview with Mail Sport, he said: 'I was in and out of foster care when I was younger. I was living with lots of different families and ended up being with one of the biggest paedophile families in Perth when I was about 10 years old. 'I was the oldest kid in the house at the time and ended up running away after six months. About a year later, they all got done (caught by the police). It was a really big thing over here in Australia.' Floyd's childhood was a nightmare, and the trauma of those years lingered long after he escaped. He still grapples with feelings of guilt, despite now understanding that he was a victim in that situation. 'Obviously now as an adult I understand I wasn't a coward,' Floyd continued. 'But, the problem is, when you are a kid you have these traumas and you can't control how you think because of them. I know now that none of what happened was my fault but I felt like it was when I was younger. 'I'll give you an example. When I was a kid and they would make me do things, you actually think you're the one in the wrong. You think you are the one molesting the other kids when you're 10. But, you're just a kid yourself. But, that's how it makes you feel in the moment. You feel like you're doing something wrong and it's awful. 'I felt like I was doing the wrong stuff. I was hurting the other kids. I was a coward for running away and getting myself out of that situation, leaving them there. I know now as an adult I wasn't, I was just a little boy who was forced to do this and that. But, I still felt it and I can't escape it today.' These formative years left deep scars on Floyd, and the trauma would drive many of his later decisions. He ended up choosing a path that would lead to violent retribution against those he saw as predators. As a young man, Floyd became fixated on taking down predators—those who, like the ones from his past, preyed on children. He gathered a group of like-minded individuals and took matters into his own hands, staging operations to confront and expose paedophiles. 'We were probably the first people who started doing stuff like this. There are people online now with cameras and stuff but we weren't doing it like that. We were just grabbing them,' he said. 'We had this really smart guy in our group who would pretend to be a kid... We would pretend our friend was a kid and would lure the paedophiles out. We would be covered up and we would have all the evidence against them so if they were going to call the police on us, we had all this evidence against them.