Steven Butler and Marcos Reyes nearly came to blows during their obligatory post weigh-in staredown on Wednesday.

It’s the closest they will come to an actual fight for the time being.

Event handlers Eye of the Tiger Management were forced to pull the plug on a show scheduled to take place Thursday evening at Casino de Montreal in Montreal, Canada. Butler and Reyes were due to collide in a battle of fringe contenders in the main event, having even both made weight on Wednesday and engaging in a brief shoving match before being separated by their respective team members.

For now, their training camp goes for naught as the show was canceled in the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The action was taken "following the recommendation of the Regional Directorate of Public Health of Montreal regarding the epidemiological risk of introduction and transmission of COVID-19,” the company said in a statement.

Shows planned for the next two Saturdays (March 14 and 21) have also been canceled, with refunds to be offered to customers who purchased tickets for any of the three events. Plans to reschedule any of the cards have not been made available to BoxingScene.com as this goes to publish.

For now, the March 28 show in Quebec—topped by undefeated lineal light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev (15-0, 15KOs) versus mandatory challenger Fanlong Meng—will proceed as planned.

Interestingly, the casino site of Thursday’s scheduled card is just five miles from Montreal’s Bell Centre, which still plans to host to a National Hockey League game between the Montreal Canadiens and Buffalo Sabres. Other NHL teams have publicly discussed the possibility of playing future games without fans in attendance, a policy that was instituted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for the balance of its postseason conference tournaments.

Such a possibility was discussed for the sake of proceeding with this show, before it was ultimately decided to cancel altogether.

Montreal’s Butler (28-2-1, 24KOs) was aiming to bounce back following a one-sided 5th round knockout loss to secondary middleweight titlist Ryota Murata (16-2, 13KOs) last December in Yokohama, Japan. The 24-year old had won 10 straight heading into the title fight and sought to return to the win column versus Mexico’s Reyes (37-8, 28KOs), who has lost his last three starts. 

The cancellation of the three shows comes on the heels of other commissions around the world taking similar precaution. The Japanese Boxing Commission (JBC) has canceled all cards scheduled for March. A COVID-19 outbreak in Italy also forced the cancellation of a March 27 DAZN show that was to be topped by an interim lightweight title fight between Francesco Patera and Devis Boschiero.

As previously reported by BoxingScene.com senior writer Keith Idec, events in the United States—particularly the March 14 and March 17 shows to air live on ESPN and ESPN+, respectively, from Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater in New York City—remain on as scheduled, though with everything being fluid at this point.

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox