Lightweight contender/prospect Anthony Peterson has pulled out of his upcoming PPV bout with Edner Cherry due to a knee injury suffered in camp, and Russian middleweight prospect Matt (Matvey) Korobov will be bumped onto the televised portion of the card from Madison Square Garden, reports Dan Rafael of ESPN.com.
Korobov (3-0, 3 KO) will be taking on Brooklyn's Cory Jones (4-4, 1 KO) in a four-round bout. And yes, it's the same Cory Jones you saw getting smashed on the February 6 Friday Night Fights against Shawn Porter. Jones also has a no-contest on his record, the result of his pro debut changed from a unanimous decision win after he failed a post-fight drug test.
Korobov won the 2005 and 2007 World Amateur Championships, as well as the 2006 European championship. In the 2008 Olympics, he lost in the round of 16 to 2004 welterweight gold medalist Bakhtiyar Artayev.
The pay-per-view does lose a small amount of sizzle as it originally had four legitimate fights, even if Peterson-Cherry was nothing to get too excited about, and Duddy-Vanda is just a slugfest between a couple of guys that aren't exactly headed for the Hall of Fame. With Korobov-Jones replacing the Peterson-Cherry fight, you're talking about a Friday Night Fights opener kicking off the pay-per-view, but it's just one of those things that happens.
Top Rank's pay-per-view, headlined by Pavlik-Rubio and Cotto-Jennings, is going to cost $44.99 this Saturday night, too, which is a bit over what the original rumors for pricing were, and the exact same cost as Pacquiao-Barrera II, for the record. So as far as this being an economy-priced show, not really. Top Rank is hoping there's enough legitimate interest in seeing this show; I don't know that there really is.