{"id":496446,"date":"2026-02-22T08:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T08:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/496446\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T08:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T08:55:11","slug":"barrios-vs-garcia-update-hitchins-out-of-title-fight-with-duarte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/496446\/","title":{"rendered":"Barrios vs Garcia update: Hitchins out of title fight with Duarte"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Richardson Hitchins will not be defending his IBF super lightweight title tonight on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.badlefthook.com\/live-boxing-updates\/113180\/mario-barrios-vs-ryan-garcia-live-streaming-updates-and-results-how-to-watch-start-times\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Barrios vs Garcia<\/a> undercard, with an illness pulling him out of the contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Hitchins was set to defend against Oscar Duarte in the night\u2019s final undercard bout. The show, of course, will go on, and now Gary Russell Jr vs Andy Hiraoka \u2014 for Russell\u2019s WBA strap at 140 lbs \u2014 will be bumped into that slot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ringmagazine\/status\/2025330077022470263\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Ring<\/a>, who are promoting the event, put out the news just a bit ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Hitchins (20-0, 8 KO) last defended the title against George Kambosos Jr in June 2025, winning via eighth round TKO. Duarte (30-2-1, 23 KO) was set for his first world title shot tonight, and obviously there\u2019s no time to find a replacement opponent and keep him on the card. He last fought in August, winning a close majority decision over Kenneth Sims Jr, and will hope to get this chance rescheduled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The fight between middleweight prospect Amari Jones and veteran Luis Arias has been bumped to the main card and will open the show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richardson Hitchins will not be defending his IBF super lightweight title tonight on the Barrios vs Garcia undercard,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,85],"class_list":["post-496446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}