Maccarinelli vs Fry: What A Farce.

As the fighters weighed in for tomorrow night's bill at Liverpool's Echo Arena, the news was announced that Enzo Maccarinelli's scheduled defence of his Commonwealth light heavyweight title against Courtney Fry had been downgraded to a ten round fight.

Following the weigh in, Fry's trainer Paul Stevenson told Livefight that today's announcement was the culmination of a 48 hour long farce.

"At a check weigh in last Friday - one week before the weigh in - Courtney weighed in at 13 stone. Then, at around 10pm on Wednesday night, I got a phone call from the Board [the British Boxing Board of Control] asking us to get Courtney to Steve Wood's office on Thursday afternoon for a second check weigh in.

"Courtney works on the doors at night and turns his phone off but we managed to get hold of him. Now we had the press conference to attend yesterday afternoon and after that the fighters usually have things to arrange like collecting money for tickets and what have you. We told the board that we'd happily weigh in at the press conference and all they had to do was send somebody over. We went to the press conference and there was nobody there to weigh him.

"At 3.30pm, I get a phone call telling me that unless Courtney does his check weigh in at 4.30pm, he can't fight for the title! We rush around, manage to get hold of him and got him to our gym at around 6.30pm where he weighed in at either 12st 11lb or 12st 12lb. Either way, it was within the 3% limit they set (the weight for light heavyweight title fights is 12st 7lb).

"We rush around, get it done and then get a phone call telling us that we were 2 hours too late and it was after the cut off time! They also told us they'd done us a favour in moving it to 4.30pm on the Thursday as it was supposed to be done the day before. Nobody even called me until 10pm the night before!

"Because it's not a title fight, Courtney's had £3,000 taken from his purse and has to fight a ten round fight. If he wins, he can't even win the title. Why not? He's been to the press conference and weigh in and made the weight.

"There's been a total lack of communication between the board and Courtney's manager [Wood]. They've all failed in their jobs and I'm fuming. They're all sitting pretty and the fighter is the only person who's being punished."

Thoughts Steffy?

must be so frustrating. boxing is a shady business sometimes and it rarely seems to be the fighter's fault.

Should have retired in 2010.