Injury forces Roy Jones Jr. to postpone Oct. 7 fight

Dan Rafael reports at ESPN.com that the scheduled October 7 fight between Roy Jones Jr. and Danny Santiago has been postponed. Jones has pulled out with a hand injury.

Rafael has this from John Wirt, Jones' partner at Square Ring Promotions:

"Roy's manager, McGee Wright, informed me [Wednesday] that Roy injured his left hand while sparring on Saturday and that on Monday, he went to the doctor and X-rays were taken. While the X-rays do not show a fracture, his hand is swollen and continues to bother him to such an extent that we have no choice but to postpone the fight."

It's probably just as well, and frankly you can't dismiss the idea that maybe tickets weren't moving and that the fight wasn't even worth doing right now, with a minor but significant-enough hand injury used as a reason to call it off. Jones is 41 years old and even his most loyal fans know he's a shot fighter, and that the 37-year-old Santiago is just another weak gimme fight, something Jones can use to further pad a record that should be closed.

I mean, no disrespect to Danny Santiago, but he's a 5'8" light heavyweight, and they were going to do this thing at 185 pounds. Santiago was to be no different than Omar Sheika, Jeff Lacy, fat Felix Trinidad, Anthony Hanshaw and Prince Badi Ajamu, except this time, Roy couldn't even get this fight picked up by Integrated Sports. This fight was going to have no television money whatsoever. Jones made pennies from his abysmal fight against Bernard Hopkins earlier this year, and said going in he knew he wouldn't make much money from this fight, either.

Expect the fight to be rescheduled, though. Jones is going to keep fighting, and it's not like Santiago has better options out there. Maybe they'll be able to work out a small TV deal on a different date.