There are still issues with respect to the location for Joseph Parker's WBO heavyweight title fight with Andy Ruiz.
The fight appeared to be taking place in Auckland on December 10 after Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum, who handles Ruiz, revealed the bout would be in the Kiwi fighter's hometown. For several weeks there was confusion on where the fight would take place, with Parker's promoter Duco Events having trouble securing government funding for the card.
But now there is once again a problem with the money after the main sponsor Ateed for the card has pulled out from funding the card.
If Duco is unable to fund the show, Arum would have the option of taking that fight to the United States.
"The reason why we don't come out and confirm these things when other people have jumped the gun is because nothing is a done deal until all the paperwork is signed, regardless of all the good intent in the world. We will now go back to the drawing board and try and find ways to make it happen. Sometimes the political and media environment doesn't make it easy. We have only 36 days to go, so the clock is ticking," Arum said to Fairfax Media.
Duco Events co-owner Dean Lonergan, said the location is still up in the air and wouldn't reveal the details.
"Up till 5pm Thursday this fight was 100 percent guaranteed coming to Auckland due to the fact we had a number of sponsors come on board with one of the major ones being Ateed," Lonergan said.
"We've been talking with them for a number of weeks putting together a package that to them made sense, based around visitation, tourism messages and feel good factors of having the fight in Auckland. Unfortunately at 5pm on Thursday, Ateed rang us to say that they were no longer going to participate. So we are back to where we were about a week ago."
One of the main undercard fights was mentioned by South African media, who claim veteran welterweight Ali Funeka will fight Jeff Horn on the Parker vs. Ruiz event. Horn, like Parker, is promoted by Duco and very close to securing a welterweight world title shot. Funeka is the WBO's African regional champion.