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A few notes from around the boxing world: • Former junior featherweight and featherweight titleholder Celestino Caballero, 38, of Panama, known as "The Towering Inferno" because he is 5-foot-11 -- huge for a 122-pounder -- has announced his retirement from boxing, ending a 16-year career. Caballero's announcement came several weeks after a 12-round decision loss to Adrian Estrella in a junior lightweight bout on Oct. 4 in Mexico. Caballero (37-6, 24 KOs) was 3-4 in his final seven bouts and beset by long layoffs. He won a junior featherweight title in 2006 and made eight defenses, including a dominating fourth-round knockout of Steve Molitor on Molitor's turf in Ontario to unify two belts and establish himself as the No. 1 fighter in the weight class. In 2011, he claimed a featherweight belt by going to Japan and outpointing Satoshi Hosono, but Caballero never defended it. • Promoter Timor Dugazaev, who staged the vacant "regular" heavyweight title bout between Ruslan Chagaev (33-2-1, 20 KOs) and Fres Oquendo (37-8, 24 KOs) on July 6 in Grozny, Russia, issued a statement on Monday claiming that Oquendo failed the Russian Anti-Doping Agency's drug screen, testing positive for the banned substances tamoxifin and anastrozole. Chagaev won the fight by majority decision. According to Dugazaev, Oquendo now must pay back his purse based on their bout agreement. The timing of the announcement is curious since the fight was several months ago. The announcement also came a week after Oquendo's team claimed that Dugazaev never paid Oquendo the full $1 million purse he was owed, in addition to claiming Chagaev owed him a rematch based on the bout agreement he signed. • England's Brian Rose (26-2-1, 8 KOs), who got knocked out in the seventh round in a mandatory challenge to junior middleweight titlist Demetrius Andrade in June, will look for a second win in a row since that fight when he faces Oklahoma City's Carson Jones (36-10-3, 26 KOs) on Jan. 23 in Manchester, England. Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn announced the fight on Monday. The fight will be on the undercard of lightweight titlist Richar Abril's defense against Manchester's Anthony Crolla. Jones is familiar to British boxing fans, having fought Kell Brook twice, before Brook won a welterweight world title. "I enjoyed watching Carson taking on Kell and he always comes to fight," Rose said. "I think our styles make for a great match up. The atmosphere in the arena is going to be electric that night and I'm looking forward to getting the win and moving up the world rankings." • Strawweight titleholder Hekkie Budler (27-1, 9 KOs), of South Africa, has been ordered to make his mandatory defense against former interim titlist Jesus Silvestre (30-5, 22 KOs), of Mexico. The WBA has given the sides until Dec. 19 to negotiate a deal. If they don't make one the fight will go to a purse bid.
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