First Alfonso Gomez, now Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.
The main event for Saturday's Top Rank pay-per-view broadcast has been fully eliminated, as BoxingScene.com reports that Chavez has officially withdrawn from the bout, where he was to face Pawel Wolak, who replaced the injured Gomez recently. Their sources say that Chavez, who was going to fight Wolak with a 165-pound weight limit, woke up Tuesday with a 100-degree fever, and that was enough for him to cancel the fight.
Wolak will face Jose Pinzon (18-1-1, 12 KO) in an eight-round bout on the undercard. The new default main event is probably best described as a double main event now. The bantamweight fight between Nonito Donaire (24-1, 16 KO) and Wladimir Sidorenko (22-2-2, 7 KO) is still on the docket, as is the lightweight title fight between Humberto Soto (53-7-2, 32 KO) and Urbano Antillon (28-1, 20 KO). Also on the card, featherweight prospect Mikey Garcia (23-0, 19 KO) faces Olivier Lontchi (18-1-2, 8 KO), who hasn't fought since a June 2009 loss to Juan Manuel Lopez, which was also a makeshift main event for a Top Rank PPV show, when the Kelly Pavlik-Sergio Mora fight fell apart.
It's still a decent card with one good, notable fight (Soto-Antillon), Donaire back in action against the best fighter he's faced since Vic Darchinyan, and the chance to see Garcia, who is very promising, in action. It's not like the Chavez main event, either against Gomez or Wolak, was some great fight. Still, either fight was definitely more intriguing on paper than Wolak-Pinzon, and the chances of us providing round-by-round coverage have gone down pretty significantly with the loss of this fight. We will definitely be doing the Saul Alvarez-Lovemore N'dou fight on HBO Latino at 12:30am (past midnight) on Saturday night, but the Top Rank show will be a wait-and-see thing. No promises.