Jeamie Tshikeva is expected to be ruled out of his fight with Frazer Clarke after suffering a rib injury during training.
The 31-year-old and Clarke were to contest the vacant British heavyweight title on October 25 at Vaillant Live in Derby, England, in what, perhaps more relevantly, represented the first fight of Boxxer’s new broadcast agreement with the BBC.
It remains unclear whether Tshikeva will be replaced with an alternative challenger for the British title, whether Clarke, 34, will still fight in a non-title contest, or whether the promotion will be postponed, but there arguably isn’t a sufficiently appealing undercard fight that could replace Clarke-Tshikeva in the main event of the launch of a new venture on British terrestrial television.
The potential blow to Boxxer follows the conclusion of their broadcast agreement with Sky Sports, and with it considerable uncertainty surrounding their promising stable of fighters.
The promising light heavyweight Ben Whittaker recently signed promotional terms with Matchroom; Ben Shalom’s fellow promotional rival Frank Warren had also been critical of their choosing to schedule Clarke-Tshikeva on the same night that Queensberry Promotions and DAZN are overseeing the pay-per-view fight between Joseph Parker and Fabio Wardley in London.
"TKV" Tshikeva had been scheduled to fulfil media obligations on Wednesday in an attempt to help promote his next contest, but, similarly, he is no longer expected to speak.
Declan Warrington has been writing about boxing for the British and Irish national newspapers since 2010. He is also a long-term contributor to Boxing News, Boxing News Presents and Talksport, and formerly the boxing correspondent for the Press Association, a pundit for BoxNation and a regular contributor to Boxing Monthly, Sport and The Ring, among other publications. In 2023, he conducted the interviews and wrote the script for the audio documentary “Froch-Groves: The Definitive Story”; he is also a member of the BWAA.
