Carl Frampton's bid to become a three-weight world champion against Jamel Herring has been postponed after the Northern Ireland boxer suffered a hand injury.
Frampton (28 wins, two defeats) was set to challenge Herring (22-2) on February 27 in London, in an attempt to add the American's WBO super-featherweight title to the previous successes at super-bantamweight and featherweight.
The bout is now expected to take place in late March, with a date and venue set to be confirmed in due course.
"I've got a bit of a twinge to my hand. Nothing serious, thankfully," Frampton said on his Inside Fighting YouTube channel, before confirming the problem was ligament damage but not a fracture to the right hand he broke during his November 2019 victory over Tyler McCreary.
"I've had to stop sparring but I will resume sparring again next week."
If he manages to overcome Herring, Frampton would become only the fourth UK fighter to reign across three weight classes and the first from the island of Ireland.
"I would have gone into this fight with my hand the way it is, but I would have had less of a chance of winning," the 33-year-old explained.
"If I rest and do what the specialist has told me I will be 100 per cent ready and prepared to win this fight.
"I can't afford to go into this fight half fit. I need to be at my very best. I'm glad that this has been pushed back a little bit."
Bit more information about the injury . Nothing serious. I will be ready in a few weeks when the date gets rescheduled. For everyone involved in this fight, thank you for understanding the situation. https://t.co/eGT32BJf5X
— Carl Frampton MBE (@RealCFrampton) February 17, 2021
Frampton has been beset by hand problems over recent years.
He went into the McCreary bout with a broken left hand, having been forced to pull out of a scheduled showdown with Emmanuel Dominguez three months earlier when a seven-foot ornamental pillar fell on him in a Philadelphia hotel lobby and fractured his fifth metacarpal.
"I've had hand problems for as long as I can remember, nothing really major but over the past six years there's always a little niggle," Frampton told Stats Perform News in an interview to preview the Herring bout last week.
"There's a plate and seven screws in my left hand and there's just one screw – the surgeon described it as like a corkscrew – in my right hand."
Herring and Frampton's clash had already been delayed twice, initially by the coronavirus pandemic and then when the 35-year-old champion suffered a scratched cornea during a disqualification victory over Jonathan Oquendo last September.
