Ramirez-O’Connor canceled, show goes on

The scheduled Saturday night ESPN main event between WBC junior welterweight titleholder Jose Ramirez and Danny O’Connor is off, but the show will go on.

The fight was canceled when challenger O’Connor (30-3, 11 KO) was hospitalized due to severe hydration from his weight cut. Promoter Joe DeGuardia describes what happened:

“He was shaking off the last two pounds and he was in the sauna and he couldn’t shake them. His body just gave way. He was out of it. At that point he had an ESPN interview scheduled [with the broadcasters] for 11:30 a.m. and his managers requested not to do the interview and to just go to the weigh-in. I thought it was just a regular losing-weight thing, but I went to his room and saw him and said, ‘You can’t do this. You need an IV, you need fluids.’ He wasn’t talking. He was incoherent. He was in bad shape.”

So while Ramirez (22-0, 16 KO) is off the show and his first title defense has been scrapped, the show will go ahead with a new main event and co-feature.

Welterweights Egidijus Kavaliauskas (19-0, 16 KO) and Juan Carlos Abreu (21-3-1, 19 KO) will be the new main event, scheduled for 10 rounds for the NABF title. The co-feature is now a super featherweight 10-rounder between Andy Vences (20-0-1, 12 KO) and Frank De Alba (22-3-2, 9 KO).