– Juan Manuel Marquez pulled out of his Super Featherweight title fight with Rocky Juarez due to an infection in a cut on his hand. The bout was supposed to headline the HBO PPV card scheduled for Sept 15th. As a result, the entire card has been canceled, including Sergio Mora vs. Kassim Ouma and Steve Forbes vs. Francisco Bojado. The Forbes-Bojado fight has been rescheduled for the Oct 6th HBO PPV headlined by Manny Pacquiao vs. Marco Antonio Barrera.
– The Marquez-Juarez fight will go on and surprisingly will be aired on Showtime. The bout was rescheduled for November 3rd and will also feature Robert Guerrero vs. Martin Honorio. It’s odd for a fight to go from HBO PPV to Showtime but as long as it saves me the pay-per-view price tag I’ll be happy.
– That still leaves Sergio Mora vs. Kassim Ouma without a home but ESPN is hoping to fix that. It seems ESPN would like to couple that fight somehow with Alfonso Gomez vs. Ben Tackie, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
– First it was Vargas-Mayorga. Then it was Marquez-Juarez. Now Vitali Klitschko’s return to the ring against Jameel McCline has been postponed. If you are keeping score, that is three consecutive weekends of canceled fights. Vitali hurt his back and had to undergo surgery, which is really nothing new for him. The surgery will most likely put an end to the Vitali-McCline fight as Vitali is expected to use the time to rest until he takes on the winner of Samuel Peter vs. Oleg Maskaev, assuming both fighters make it to fight night.
– Unedited broadcasts of the fights from the current season of The Contender can be seen on ESPN2, beginning Sept 21st. The fights will air each Thursday night at 12:30 am ET.
