Rihanna has comprehensively taken down new rumours that she’s dating sports star Matt Barnes via her Instagram page, seemingly denying that the two had even met.

The 27 year old pop star, who has been rumoured to be going out with Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton in the recent past, has also been connected with the 35 year old NBA star in gossip columns, with sources claiming that they’d been on a couple of dates. Barnes fanned the flames of that particular fire with a statement to TMZ over the weekend.

RihannaRihanna has denied Matt Barnes' claims that the two are romantically linked

Admittedly, he had seemed to give out some conflicting messages when TMZ caught up with the Memphis Grizzlies’ forward on Sunday (August 16th). “Rihanna's my friend right now, so we'll see where it goes,” he said. “I think it just passed the crush stage a little bit. Just a little bit, though.” However, he did also refer to the rumoured coupling as mere “speculation”.

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He was also asked whether the fact that he’d recently moved from the Los Angeles Clippers to the Grizzlies would be a problem, to which he replied that long distance love wouldn’t be a problem, saying “nah, she’s rich. We’ll be alright.”

However, RiRi acted pretty quickly to shut that news item down, responding by posting a picture of Barnes with a blanked out face with the hashtags “#defamationofcharacter” and “#shesnotintoyouatall” underneath. All in front of 24.5 million Instagram followers. Pretty damning evidence.

Barnes himself responded to the takedown by leaving a comment underneath, saying “Hahaaa wow”.

So, while no official confirmation either way has been released, it would seem reasonable to assume that, if ever there was the possibility of a romantic relationship, it’s gone now.

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