Ray Beltran tested positive for a banned substance after his May 1 knockout win over Takahiro Ao and his June 27 bout with Humberto Soto is off, according to Dan Rafael of espn.com.
“Just disappointed. I’m disappointed for Beltran and I’m disappointed for us, but eventually fighters are going to learn not to try to cheat the system,” Carl Moretti, vice president of Top Rank, Beltran’s promoter, told ESPN.com. “I feel worse about it that it happened to [Ao promoter] Mr. [Akihiko] Honda and our friends from Teiken Boxing and that their fighter, Ao, was hurt by all this.”
“I talked to Ray and he doesn’t think he took anything illegal,” Cameron Dunkin, Beltran’s manager, told ESPN.com. “I asked him if he had been taking any pills and he said he took some supplements he was given by his guys, but he didn’t think they had anything [illegal] in them. I’m getting a list of what he was taking.
“He’s devastated about the Soto fight. Who wouldn’t be? He feels betrayed by somebody who was working with him, but he doesn’t know by who. He has three different guys who work with him but somebody really let him down. Someone didn’t look out for him. This is terrible. There’s nothing else to say.”
BoxingScene first reported the positive test
Moretti said one possible opponent is Jose Felix Jr. (29-1-1, 24 KOs), 23, of Mexico, a Top Rank boxer who is training for a June 13 UniMas-televised bout, but has no opponent yet.
HBO said it plans to keep Soto on the telecast. It is the second fight in a month that has been canceled on Soto, through no fault of his own. The reason HBO found a spot for him on June 27 was because his fight against Frankie Gomez on May 9 at Minute Maid Park in Houston — the co-feature of Canelo Alvarez-James Kirkland — was canceled the day before the bout because Gomez was 6½ pounds overweight at the weigh-in, which cost Soto a low six-figure payday.
