David Adeleye is out of his championship clash with Solomon Dacres
David Adeleye (12-1, 11KO) has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled English heavyweight title fight with Solomon Dacres (8-0, 2KO) on July 20 after suffering an injury in training.
The 27-year-old ‘Big D’ from Ladbroke Grove announced on X, “Apologies to everyone who bought tickets to my showdown on July 20th. I was itching and excited to be out but the bout had to be rescheduled due to an injury during camp. Thank you for your continued support. Stay tuned. I’ll be out soon.”
Adeleye won the WBO European heavyweight title against 10-0 Dmytro Bezus in February 2023, then defended it to 12-1 Emir Ahmatovic in June, both times at the York Hall in London, both via KOs within the first half of the contests.
But then he suffered his first defeat when he stepped up to fight fellow unbeaten prospect Fabio Wardley for the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles in Saudi Arabia, on the Fury-Ngannou undercard last October, losing his WBO European belt in the process. One scorecard had him losing every single round until the seventh round stoppage.
The July 20 ‘Magnificent Seven’ show will still go ahead despite the cancellation of this anticipated clash, with Solomon Dacres still looking to fight.
‘The Real Deal’ from Warley won the English title in his fifth fight and has defended it once already, both times in 2023.
Trained by Max McCracken, West Midlander Dacres won a gold medal in the 2017 National Championships, before joining the Team GB squad in April 2017 and representing the British Lionhearts in the World Series of Boxing during a three-year spell in Sheffield, which led to him signing with Matchroom in December 2020.
BoxRec currently have Adeleye ranked at #13 and Dacres at #14, so the match-up between power and skill was set to create an intriguing clash, which, according to Adeleye, is thankfully being rescheduled.
The packed event also lost one of the headlining fights when Liam Davies had to pull out of his IBO World title defence to Shabaz Masoud, who will now fight Nicaraguan Marvin Solano. The former WBC Continental Americas super-flyweight champion has lost his last 11 fights in a row, so should be no problem for the unbeaten ‘Maverick’ from Stoke to deal with.
The headlining slot now belongs solely to Nathan Heaney as he defends his British middleweight title to Brad Pauls for a second time after the entertaining pair reached a stalemate last March.
The inclusion of Zach Parker vs Jack Arnfield to the bill was to make up for the cancelled fights. The super-middleweights will clash over 10 rounds, which will likely see the Derbyshire puncher aim for an 18th career knockout, to rebuild his world title chances, but Blackpool’s Arnfield hasn’t been stopped in 29 fights.
Ashley Lane defended his British and Commonwealth bantamweight titles to aggressive challenger Andrew Cain is set to be one of the fights of the night.