Frank Warren has revealed that Daniel Dubois was forced to pull out of his fight against Joseph Parker due to a ‘viral condition’.
Dubois was set to defend his IBF world heavyweight title against Parker this Saturday as part of a bumper fight card in Saudi Arabia which is headlined by Artur Beterbiev’s rematch with Dmitry Bivol.
However, the 27-year-old has withdrawn from the fight after failing to recover from an illness he has suffered since arriving in Saudi Arabia this week.
Martin Bakole, who has won 21 of his 22 professional fights, has stepped in to replace Dubois and travelled from Congo to Saudi Arabia on Friday.
Warren has revealed that Dubois took medication in an attempt to be fit to face Parker but claims the IBF world heavyweight champion went on to suffer from ‘drowsiness’.
‘It was a big fight, he’s trained very hard,’ Warren told iFL TV when asked about Dubois’ condition.
‘If you don’t fight you don’t get paid, imagine the cost of a training camp, booking places, set the camp up, bring the sparring partners in, nutritionists, chefs, trainers, and you don’t get paid.
‘It’s a massive loss, you can’t insure it, if you do it costs a fortune to insure.
‘Very, very disappointed. It was an unbelievable purse he was getting for the fight but we are where we are, if you’re not well, you can’t fight.
‘I’m always saying to the fighters I don’t want to hear after the event if anything goes wrong that you had a bad hand, or a cold, or your budgie died, none of that matters, you live to fight another day.
‘We knew he weren’t well. When he went to the doctor originally he was just going to have the doctor examine him, give him some medication but the medication he gave him obviously had to be checked that it didn’t have any ingredients on the WADA list.
‘To do that they got in touch with the Boxing Board of Control, then a Boxing Board of Control doctor came along and he got a little bit worse by then.
‘One of the medicines he was given causes a lot of drowsiness, so that was the end of that.’
Asked specially what is wrong with Dubois, Warren replied: ‘He’s got a viral infection.
‘Quite a few people have been getting it out here. I remember the last time when we went back from here [in December] a lot of people were ill over Christmas.
‘You see some of these conspiracy theorists, you don’t know where their brains are sometimes, if they’ve even got any.’
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