By Elliot Foster

Gamal Yafai has been forced out of his next fight.

The Commonwealth super-bantamweight champion had been set to defend his rainbow belt against Sean Davis (10-0) on Saturday, exclusively live on Sky Sports.

But the 25-year-old (10-0, 4 KOs) withdrew from his clash with the English champion, on October 22 at Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham, as part of the undercard to Frankie Gavin’s clash against Sam Eggington for the vacant WBC International welterweight crown, due to a foot injury.

Yafai, who was last in action against Josh Wale in July, took to social media to announce his reasoning behind pulling out of the fight.

“[I’m] absolutely gutted to pull out of defending my title this Saturday in Birmingham,” he tweeted.

“Training camp went great [and I] was in the best shape of my career, then to go over my ankle in my last hard session [on] Friday evening was a nightmare.

“[I] did everything I could do to be able to fight but there was just no chance.

“‘Devastated’ [isn’t] the word. To go through hell and back in training, all the sacrifices I've had to put in, to have nothing to show for it at the end is heart breaking.

“I’ll be back soon.”

As a result, Paul Economides (20-5, 4 KOs) was handed the opportunity by the show’s promoter, Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport, to step in to face Davis and the vacant WBC International title at super-bantamweight will be at stake.

Economides was most recently in action just last weekend, when he opened up the undercard action to Tony Bellew’s three-round retention of the WBC cruiserweight world title against colourful Californian BJ Flores, outpointing Elvis Guillen over six rounds at Liverpool’s ECHO Arena.

And Kal Yafai, the British and WBA Inter-Continental super-flyweight champion who has a record of 19-0 with 13 early, has been added to the card and is expected to be in a warm-up fight ahead of a potential world title show towards the tail end of the year.