Sinnette’s bout with Bajan off again

The bout, originally slated for January 6 and rescheduled for late January because of a foot injury to Thomas, is now not likely to take place in the first quarter of this year.

Thomas has had a recurrence of the foot injury and the promoters are also unhappy over the financial preparations for the bout.

"We encountered two problems, one, the finances and two, Marcus has a foot injury," Sam Layne, who manages Thomas, told CMC Sport yesterday.

Layne says this latest development mirrors problems he had with Thomas in the past year and he hopes he can regain full fitness and allow his career to flourish in 2006.

"Marcus had a lot of injuries during 2005 and we had to put off five fights that we had scheduled for him overseas against top opponents including (bouts) in Europe, Australia and the United States.

"At this point now, he’s back in training and he is looking very good, so I hope he stays injury free within the next couple of months so that we can get him fight sharp," Layne said.

Layne has scheduled a February 16 rematch in Trinidad against local fighter Garfield Quashie in a warm-up for a possible clash with Sinette.

Thomas defeated Quashie on points in November 2003 in Barbados to retain his CABOFE belt and Layne expects the contest to be a good test of his boxer's readiness for a tough fight against Sinette.

"He (Marcus) fought Quashie before and Quashie was a creditable opponent and took him the whole 10 rounds. Quashie is already in training so we are looking for an interesting fight," Layne said.

The Thomas-Sinette clash has been widely anticipated in recent months since the two are genuinely outstanding boxers with immensely successful amateur careers behind them.

Thomas is an eight-time Caribbean amateur champion while Sinette also collected regional gold medals and is a former winner of the most outstanding boxer award at the Caribbean championship.

Thomas and Sinette are both undefeated as professionals — Sinette 9-0, with six knockouts and Thomas is 7-0 (3 knockouts).