Torres withdraws from rubber match with Holt, replaced by D. Hopkins
Kendall Holt and Ricardo Torres were supposed to settle matters with a rubber match for Holt's junior welterweight title on Saturday in Atlantic City, N.J., but it's going to have to wait.
Torres, the former titleholder, withdrew Sunday from the fight, Top Rank president Todd duBoef told ESPN.com, and Monday, he was replaced by Demetrius Hopkins in the main event of "ShoBox: The New Generation" (Showtime, 11 p.m. ET/PT).
Torres withdrew, duBoef said, because of problems making the 140-pound weight limit because of an illness.
"We were told he had a virus last week and started to get heavy fighting the virus because he was taking in so much fluid," duBoef said. "Finally, on Saturday night, we got a message that he was not coming in [from Colombia] for the fight. We tried see if he would come in and work on losing the weight, but on Sunday they didn't get on the plane."
Hopkins (28-0-1, 11 KOs), the nephew of former light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins, was already scheduled to face Germaine Sanders on the untelevised Showtime undercard and is promoted by Top Rank, which made him the obvious choice to fill in on short notice.
Hopkins, who will earn $100,000, was accepted by Showtime and Holt, who will earn $220,000, also agreed to the fight after opponents such as Randall Bailey, Mike Arnaoutis and Lamont Peterson were also considered.
"Demetrius is prepared and ready to fight for the title," manager Cameron Dunkin said.
Besides the change in opponent, Holt (24-2, 13 KOs), of Paterson, N.J., is also dealing with the Friday arrest of his manager, Henry Cortes, on conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Cortes, who usually works in Holt's corner as an assistant, remains in Passaic County (N.J.) Jail with bail set at $500,000.
The third fight with Torres was much anticipated after their two previous wild fights. Torres retained the title in their first controversial meeting in September 2007 in Colombia. He stopped Holt in the 11th round of a fight in which both men were knocked down. During the bout, Holt was hit with a beer bottle thrown by a spectator, fans pelted the ring with liquid and debris throughout and there were several questionable calls by referee Geno Rodriguez before he stopped the bout with Holt leading on two of the three official scorecards.
They met again in a July 5 rematch in Las Vegas and Holt avenged the defeat and claimed the belt with a brutal first-round knockout in the likely round of the year. It was 61 seconds of mayhem as Torres knocked Holt down twice before he rallied to knock him cold following an accidental head butt.
The televised co-feature pits junior middleweight Yuri Foreman (26-0, 8 KOs) against James Moore (16-1, 10 KOs). Highlighting the undercard, Matvey Korobov (1-0, 1 KO), the highly touted 2008 Russian Olympic middleweight, faces Jason Wahr (1-1-2).
