Robert Guerrero’s wife very ill; fight with Katsidis off

According to Dan Rafael of espn.com., a proposed bout between WBO “Interim” Lightweight bout Michael Katsidis and IBF Jr. Lightweight champion Robert Guerrero is off due to Guerrero’s wife being seriously ill as her bout Leukemia has returned.

“It’s a very tough situation,” co-manager Shelly Finkel told ESPN.com. “He can’t fight like that. That’s what we all told him and he finally agreed. It’s too much.”

Guerrero’s wife, Casey, was diagnosed with leukemia two weeks before then-featherweight titleholder Guerrero was scheduled to defend his belt against Martin Honorio in November 2007.

Guerrero left his wife’s bedside just a couple of days before the fight, knocked Honorio out in the first round, and returned to his wife and their two children.

Casey Guerrero’s leukemia eventually went into remission but is back. She underwent a bone marrow transplant recently and has been at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., for about 10 days, Guerrero’s co-manager Bob Santos said.

“They won’t really know if the bone marrow is going to take, so we’re hoping that it does,” Santos said. “Robert wanted to fight. He thought he could spend half the day with her and train the other half the day, but she started to take a turn for the worse. I told him point blank there is no way I would allow him to fight. Me and Shelly had to talk him out of it. This is a tough sport and if he’s going to fight somebody like Katsidis you have to be 100 percent focused. With this situation, how could he be?”

“She had just been diagnosed and there was a lot of hope and optimism,” he said. “The doctorshttp://www.15rounds.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=12472&type=video&TB_iframe=true were like, ‘We can try this and we can do that.’ In this case, it’s hit or miss. We just don’t know if the [bone marrow transplant] is going to work. If this doesn’t work there is nothing they can do for you. She’s at a point where if this doesn’t work, unless there is divine intervention, she’s in big trouble.

“I got the call and they said it’s very serious,” said Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions, who promotes Guerrero. “All of our prayers are with Robert and his wife and we hope that she can pull through. I feel so bad. They have two young kids. I hope that she will be able to make it. His wife is fighting for her life. That is way more important than any fight in a ring.”