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Mama June Shannon has gone full mama bear!
The 38-year-old reality star is not backing down in her child custody battle with ex-boyfriend Mike “Sugar Bear” Thompson. In a sneak peek for an upcoming episode of WE tv’s Mama June: From Not to Hot, the mother of four goes head to head in a war of words with her baby daddy.
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Source: Instagram @mamajune
During a tense mediation with Sugar Bear, 46, Mama June lashes out at her ex and accuses him of not spending enough time with their biological daughter, Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson.
“They don’t talk,” she alleges. “It’s so sporadic that it’s kind of…it’s crazy.”
However, Sugar Bear counters in a separate confession that it’s Mama June’s fault that he doesn’t have a good relationship with his 12-year-old daughter. After all, he argues, it’s his former girlfriend that “doesn’t want to pick up the d**n phone” when he calls to speak with their child.
“I’d like to kinda see if we could get on the same page and see if I could get some regular unsupervised visitation to see how that goes,” he tells the mediator in charge of overseeing the custody battle.
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Naturally, Mama June is not thrilled with the idea of her ex spending more time with Honey Boo Boo. Scoffing at the idea, she blasts, “He could’ve gotten his a** in the car if he wanted to see her so badly, but he didn’t.”
“If he wants more visitation, Sugar Bear needs to say, ‘I want to be a father to Alana’ and be there all the time,” she argues.
“That’s my daughter. I want to be in her life. I want to be her father,” Sugar Bear insists. “Whatever I got to do I want to do it.”
But that doesn’t seem enough for Mama June. Losing her temper, the matriarch then starts screaming at her ex and tells him that their daughter is sick of him being an unreliable and absent parent.
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Credit: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for WEtv
Credit: WE tv
“Jessica and Pumpkin have the same dad, but Jessica’s dad has had nothing to do with her over the years,” Mama June told Entertainment Tonight in 2014. “So, why the hell would I open up that can of worms until today? I lied to my family and told them it was somebody else.”
Last year, while promoting the show, Mama June spoke more about her tumultuous time with Sugar Bear and told daytime show host Wendy Williams that they were still on bad terms. During an interview, she alleged that he was “emotionally and physically” abusive during their relationship — a claim her ex has since vehemently denied — and that their biological daughter has had little contact with him since their separation.
“There was a lot of stuff that was [hidden] for many, many years,” she said. “Pumpkin's eye was his fault. The car wreck. Several things that happened on Honey Boo Boo that was covered up.”
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“There was just so much emotional and physical abuse,” she later explained to Life & Style, when asked if she would ever take him back. “I just choose not to put my kids through that.”
These days, Mama June is in a happy relationship with Georgia-based handyman Geno Doak. As Celebuzz! previously reported, the reality star first got to know Geno, who runs local remodeling company called G & J Home Improvements, when she hired him to fix up her home in 2015. They were said to have briefly dated in 2015, though the construction guru denied knowing Mama June at the time.
The couple seemingly rekindled their romance last year when June failed to find a man on the first season of her reality series. In July 2017, Geno shared a cryptic photo on his Facebook suggesting he was back with reality TV matriarch. “Once you start loving someone its hard to stop,” the picture’s caption read.
He also wrote in a status update that same month, “Roses are red , you’ve got big thighs , I sucks at poems, butterflies.” The short and sweet prose was liked by Mama June’s personal Facebook account.
Credit: WE tv
Credit: WE tv
If that wasn’t enough evidence to suggest that something was going on between the two, they were also spotted looking positively smitten when they arrived on the same plane at the Los Angeles International Airport this January. Later, in photos obtained by the Daily Mail, Geno was snapped helping his girlfriend with her luggage as they loaded up an awaiting cab together.
“[My boyfriend] came into our life when we actually needed someone to say, ‘OK, all men aren’t bad,’” Mama June told Us Weekly earlier this year, explaining her family gave their seal of approval when they met him. “It’s been a long time. I mean, it’s been a good, probably, 15 years since I’ve been happy. It’s a lot different. He’s one-of-a-kind.”
Geno, a divorced dad with an adult son and two teenage daughters, was admittedly worried that people would think he was dating June “just for money” and fame. However, according to her, “that’s not the case.”
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“He just doesn’t watch reality TV. I mean, you know, he does now watch the show, but he doesn’t care two cents less about the cameras,” she said, adding that “kids knew, but he didn’t” about her life as a reality TV star. “He makes very good money. He does remodeling and construction work, so he makes good money himself.”
At the time, Mama June added that she was considering marriage “for the first time in my life.”
As fans know, Mama June previously staged a wedding — albeit didn’t actually make the union official — with then-boyfriend Sugar Bear on May 5, 2013 during the second season of TLC’s Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. A source at the time told E! News the couple didn’t sign legal documents to get married, but held “just a commitment ceremony” to reaffirm their love for one another.
Credit: WE tv
Credit: WE tv
Credit: WE tv
Credit: Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images for WE tv
In a 2015 interview with Inside Edition, the mom confessed to having past attractions to women after her daughter, Pumpkin, came out as bisexual. When Pumpkin told the reporter that June was gay, she clarified by saying that she actually liked both men and women.
“Bisexual,” she elaborated. “I’m not going to lie, I played in the minors but never went pro.”
But, as surprising as the bisexual revelation was to some of Mama June’s most loyal fans, it wasn’t as shocking as when she was romantically linked to Mark McDaniel, a registered sex offender who spent a decade in prison for molesting her now-estranged daughter, Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell. Though Mama June did deny ever dating the convict after her split with Sugar Bear in 2014, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was nonetheless canceled amid the controversy.
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“She got her boobies done,” she added. “She got them from a 44 long to 36 up.”
Mama June debuted her new body when she crashed Sugar Bear’s wedding on Mama June: From Not to Hot‘s first season finale. After literally making Sugar Bear’s jaw drop when she showed up at his door in a figure-hugging red dress, she made peace with her ex by thanking him for motivating her to get in shape.
“I have to say thank you in a way, because at first, I was doing this transformation to kind of like, show you that I could do it and make myself a better person, and show myself that was worth something. But then I decided through this journey that it wasn’t about you, and it wasn’t about everything that I’ve been through with you. It was about me. So now, thanks to you, I have lost for myself, and I will never go back to the way I was,” June said, before her ex’s new wife stormed inside and called her a “b***h.”
“When I left this town, I weighed 450 pounds, and now I’m a size 4,” June remarked.
