According to Dan Rafael of espn.com, the April 10th co-feature bout between IBF Light Heavyweight champion Yavoris Clous and Glen Johnson is off citing a hamstring injury to Cloud plus the champion signing a promotional deal with Don King.
“I got a call at literally 10 at night [Monday] from a representative of King [Roy Langbord] saying King did a deal with the kid,”Said Lou DiBella told ESPN.com on Tuesday night from Miami, site of the Wednesday news conference. DiBella is promoting the April 10 double header that will also feature AndreBerto defending hs WBC Welterweight title against Carlos Quintana. “I told him that Richie Boy Promotions was the kid’s promoter of record and that I had made deal for the fight with Glen. [Langbord] said there were issues and that King did a deal with Cloud, but that King would talk to me about doing a deal for the fight. I already had a deal for the fight. So I’m sitting there — I have a show on April 10, a press conference on Wednesday and a flight to Miami in 12 hours. What the [expletive] is going on here? I told [Langbord] to tell Don I have nothing to talk to him about.
“Ten minutes later I get a call back [from Langbord] saying Cloud is hurt. I was on the phone with his lawyer, with his manager and with his adviser. They said they had no idea about him being with King. They were in the blind about him doing a deal with King and to their knowledge he was healthy. He must have gotten hurt walking up the steps to King’s mansion to sign that deal.”
“I don’t know anything about any of that,” King told ESPN.com when told of DiBella’s version of events. “All I know is that the guy came to me five weeks ago and him and his manager [Jerry Attardi] told me they had no deal with anybody and they asked me to help and I said, ‘OK.’ We finalized the details. He signed with me and I didn’t know nothing about any of this.”
“This guy is hurt. He can’t even fight if he wanted to,” King said. “I told Lou [through Langbord] I’d be happy to have him fight Glen, but he can’t do it April 10. We’ll jump through hoops to fight Glen Johnson. But we asked for a medical exception from the IBF, the IBF granted an exception. It’s just a postponement of the fight. With or without me, Cloud wouldn’t be able to fight on April 10. So he’ll fight Glen Johnson as soon as the doctor clears him.”
“I had to make a decision in the middle of the night on whether I could save this fight and I didn’t think it could, so I turned to the most meaningful thing I could do and something that would also work for HBO,” DiBella said. “I was on the phone with Caballero’s people and we were in touch with Yordan’s people in Indonesia.”
“They got back to me quickly and they weren’t interested in the fight in this time frame,” DiBella said. “I had already locked in a doubleheader with the site and the promotional materials were done. So we made Caballero-Yordan overnight and changed everything.”
“There may be some lawsuits. I suffered damages,” DiBella said. “I don’t like litigating, but what went down was wrong and the way it went down was wrong.”
