By Shaun Brown

Jake Ball (12-1, 9 KOs) is out of this weekend’s WBA Inter-Continental Light Heavyweight title fight against Craig Richards (12-1, 6 KOs).

The Eddie Hearn promotion, to be shown live on Sky Sports, had already suffered a setback when Isaac Lowe withdrew from his rematch against Ryan Walsh for the British Featherweight title. The card was and still is still a stacked one, however, with John Ryder headlining the show from London’s Copper Box arena.

Ball, who recently joined forces with trainer Dominic Ingle, took to Twitter to confirm the news that his fight against Richards is off for the time being.

“I’m gutted to announce that due to picking up an injury in the final preparations of my camp for October 27 it has forced me to withdraw from my fight this weekend.

“After a hard training camp and finishing off with two weeks of top sparring in Canada I was in the best shape of my career, but at this stage in my career I can’t afford to get in to the ring unless I’m at 100%.

“This fight has drawn a lot of interest so I’m hoping Eddie Hearn can make this happen before the end of the year.

Ball, from Surrey, and Richards, from London looked like having a good chance of being the fight of the night. No news yet on who Richards might face now but the show goes on and features John Ryder’s resurgence at Super Middleweight when he faces the unbeaten Andrey Sirotkin in a WBA final eliminator. While the Commonwealth Featherweight title fight between Ryan Doyle and Jordan Gill, Ted Cheeseman versus Asinia Byfield for the vacant British Super Welterweight title and the crunch domestic Cruiserweight bout between Isaac Chamberlain v Luke Watkins look certain to provide plenty of fireworks on the night.

There are also outings for Martin J Ward, Reece Bellotti, Felix Cash, Charlie Duffield and George Fox.