DARREN Tetley insists he is still the true WBO European champion – after losing the title without throwing a punch.

The unbeaten Holme Wood welterweight is furious after discovering he has been stripped of the belt by the governing body.

They claim that he did not inform them he was fighting at the Bradford Hotel last month – something he angrily denies.

“In my eyes I’m still the champion,” he said in a video on Twitter. “I haven’t lost it in the ring, I haven’t been beaten.

“It just shows the business side of boxing and the downside.

“I went through hell in the fight to win the title, put everything I had in training and then stuff like this happens.

“I’m absolutely devastated. I put everything on the line to win that belt and to be able to say I’m WBO European champion.”

Tetley won the title at Elland Road in May after an epic struggle against Mason Cartwright. But the WBO say they did not licence him to appear in Bradford last month when he beat William Warburton, his first pro bout in his home city.

Tetley added: “They are trying to say we didn’t tell them – which is rubbish. They knew exactly I was fighting on that show.

“If they didn’t know, I wouldn’t have put it all over Twitter.

“At no point when we told them, did they turn round and say that I was going to get stripped. They never said anything.

“The belt is still in my house. I don’t know whether they’ll take it off me or I get to keep it.

“I’ll have a long hard think about what I want to do from now on. Maybe I’ll win it back, I don’t know.

“People in boxing know it’s more than going in the ring and throwing a few punches. This is the other side of that unfortunately.

“No wonder so many people quit and don’t want be involved with it.

“Fifteen years of my life I’ve been boxing to get to where I get and then it’s taken away like that.”

Cartwright is now fighting Ryan Kelly for the WBO European belt in Bolton on Saturday.