By Edward Chaykovsky
According to the Daily Telegraph, the middleweight fight between Martin Murray and Garth Wood, set for December 11th in Sydney, has been canceled due to the rescheduled date between Shane Mosley and Anthony Mundine, now taking place on November 27th at the All Phones Arena in Homebush, Australia.
Mosley-Mundine was scheduled to take place a few weeks ago and then canceled at the last minute when Mosley withdrew due to a financial dispute with promoter Vlad Wharton, who failed to pay the former champion the remainder of his purse, $700,000.
The conflict for tickets and the local pay-per-view market is to blame, but Wood is furious that his fight for Murray's WBA interim-middleweight title is now off.
"How can we risk following a fight that is essentially two blokes fighting for their super fund?'' Wood asked. "If the Mundine fight is a farce, and I believe it will be, what hope have you got of asking Aussie punters to then shell out another 50 bucks to watch you a fortnight later? And right before Christmas. People are fed up with the fight game. That's what we hoped to change. We weren't bringing a fighter who is on the way out to Sydney. We were bringing a genuine world champion; a guy ranked No.1 for a reason," Wood said.
"But to do that, it was going to cost my backers $800,000 ... I can't ask people to outlay that sort of money if we're going to be made to follow a circus."