Gerry Peñalosa's mandatory defense of his World Boxing Organization bantamweight title on March 2 is in limbo, following reports that TV network ABS-CBN and Golden Boy Promotions failed to finalize the deal for the fight, a report posted on fightnews.com said yesterday.

Peñalosa, who hails from San Carlos City , Negros Occidental, has been penciled to fight Thailand 's Ratanachai Sor Vorapin, whom he knocked out six years ago, at the Araneta Coliseum.

A report on philboxing.com said the plan to stage the fight hasn't been totally abandoned, although ABS-CBN and Golden Boy Promotions are looking at a possible April date provided the budget could be reduced.

It appears that the proximity to the Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez rematch has made it hard to recover costs through advertising revenues since most of the money is being siphoned off by the Pacquiao fight, the report written by Ronnie Nathanielz said.

In the same report, Golden Boy Promotions Philippine representative Sammy Gello-ani said that the inclusion of AJ “Bazooka” Banal and Rey “Boom Boom” Bautista in the card has pushed the costs up.

While March 2 is off since there was hardly time to promote the title bout, Gello-ani said this doesn't necessarily mean that the project has been scrapped.

He said the plan is “to move it back” to sometime in April.*CPT

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