Mayweather promotions quickly had to get a late replacement for Gervonta Davis the WBA Super world Super Featherweight champion after Abner Mares pulled out of the February 9 clash scheduled for the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
Mares (31-3-1, 15KO), 33 after having called out Davis (20-0, 19KO) for the WBA title, pulled out of the fight a week to the fight.
Mares withdrew from the fight on Wednesday January 30 citing elbow injury. The four times world champion and three divisional boxer was sighted with a patch on his right eye which suggests he had a problem with his eye.
Appearing on the “Inside PBC Boxing” show with a patched right eye, Mares said “I did have a bad elbow but not too bad to cancel the fight. I didn’t want people to know about my eye. I was scared to let people know that I was through this.”
When asked why he had kept this away and rather talked about the elbow, he had this to say
“that is why I’m here, a lot of people know. I suffered a retina detachment in my left eye and eleven years after I became a four times world champion.”
He added “unfortunately I suffered another one in my right eye leading up to the fight with Davis. I feel strong and I know I will come back.”
Davis initially had sent a message to Mares accusing him of faking injury but he quickly backtracked upon getting a confirmation of Mares retina detachment.
“I was actually asleep when I got a call that Abner pulled out. At first I thought he was lying,” Davis alluded. “Then I had to think, if I was in his shoes I knew his health means more than our fight.
Hopefully he will be okay and we’ll get another shot at fighting him sometime in 2019 but my main focus is on February 9 and on my new opponent.”
Davis who had been out of the ring for about ten months from his last fight against Jesus Cuellar for the title was looking to defend his title with Mares. Davis had suffered a similar fate of getting a replaced opponent in his defence for the IBF when he failed to make weight for the fight to finally settle on Francisco Fonseca.
Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather promotions quickly arranged an opponent for the card since the fight has been sold out already. So Hugo Ruiz accepted the challenge and came on board to replace Abner Mares.
Ruiz 30, (39-4, 33KO) is a former WBC Super Bantamweight champion who had his first featherweight title fight on January 19 on the Pacquiao vs Broner card.
Ruiz was supposed to have fought Jhack Tepora for the WBO Featherweight title but the latter failed to make weight, the fight was cancelled and Tepora stripped off the title. Ruiz took on Alberto Guevara as a replacement and handed him a unanimous decision defeat.
“I trained for three months to fight a southpaw when I fought in January,” Ruiz said. “When the opponent changed, it was hard to adjust in 24 hours. After the fight, I immediately went back to the gym, because you never know what’s going to happen in boxing. I’m 100 percent ready to knock out Gervonta Davis” Ruiz added.