Le’Veon Bell’s primetime boxing debut will have to wait. The Social Gloves 2 event, which was previously scheduled for July 30 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, has been postponed due to an injury by Aneson Gib, who was headlining the event alongside Austin McBroom. A statement announcing the postponement was posted on the Social Gloves Twitter account.
For Bell, it’s just another hit for a career that really stalled out after leaving Pittsburgh. After signing his mega-deal with the New York Jets, he bounced around the league and is out of the NFL entirely right now and already announced he won’t play this upcoming season as he shifts his focus to boxing.
If nothing else, at least he’ll have more time to train to fight against Adrian Peterson. No makeup date for the event was announced, but it won’t happen until September at the earliest. These celebrity boxing matches don’t usually amount to much of anything, but Jake Paul has been able to launch a successful career in the sport off of them. Bell is obviously going to be looking to do the same, but he’s already 30 years old, and getting a late start to the sport isn’t ideal. I can’t imagine the postponement was something he or Peterson wanted, especially so close to the event.
Last week, Bell posted some pictures of his training in the ramp-up to the fight.
He also posted a tweet looking for companies to sponsor him, so I guess he’ll have more time to find a few more sponsors too if the event still happens. Another celebrity fight on the card featuring former NBA player Nick Young against rapper Blueface will also have to wait. It’s unknown whether or not anyone on the card will drop out given the postponement, but it wouldn’t be too surprising to see a change or two to the card.
The first Social Gloves event was rife with controversy and was hit with multiple lawsuits. Given the setback to this event, I also wouldn’t be all that shocked if the event was canceled altogether. If that’s the case, I wonder if Bell will find another boxing promotion to try and latch onto and kick his boxing career off. Either way, this news isn’t welcome if you were looking forward to watching two fairly washed-up NFL players likely struggle through a few rounds of a boxing match.
