In the most stunning boxing news we're likely to hear in 2010, Evander Holyfield has "pulled out" of his "scheduled" February fight with Francois Botha in Uganda, citing "money" as an "issue."
Joey Abell will take Holyfield's place, and linked article author Per Ake Persson calls it "not a bad matchup." I respectfully disagree.
Botha-Holyfield was supposed to take place on January 16. I said back in November:
Chances are this fight never happens. You can almost set your watch to Evander scheduling a fight in a foreign country and then it never happening, so don't expect this one to actually take place either.
Then on New Year's eve, ESPN for some reason felt the need to legitimize this never-on farce, running an announcement of the "fight" on their crawl:
Why ESPN thought this news was relevant enough to be mentioned when something like Mosley-Berto gets roughly the same ESPN coverage is beyond me, but I'd almost appreciate it if they didn't lend crap fights like this any credibility. In some ways, they legitimized this fight merely by mentioning it. But I still think it won't actually happen.
I mean, it's like, do I get a prize for this? I have correctly predicted the least predictable thing you could ever think of, at least in boxing. Holyfield, 47, will not be fighting Botha, 41, in Uganda. I'm like the new Criswell.