By Igor Lazorin, tass

The former world champion in three weight divisions, 'Sugar' Shane Mosley, is unable to fight hot Russian fighter Magomed Kurbanov.

Mosley was unable to go forward due to a back injury, according to the chief executive of the promotional company RCC Boxing Promotion, Alexey Titov.

The fight was originally scheduled to take place on May 5 in Yekaterinburg. The fight was postponed after Mosley had a back injury and was forced to undergo surgery. They pushed back the fight to September 9th.

However, it was later revealed that Mosley's surgery was not successful and a second surgery would be necessary. Due to the second surgery, the fight was pushed back even further, to December.

Because Mosley was unable to guarantee that he would be ready by December, the fight has now completely fallen through.

"Mosley refused to fight him. He went through an unsuccessful surgery on his back, and there is a need to fully recover. Mosley himself could not guarantee the date of when he would be physically able to return to the ring. Because of this, we will select an opponent for Kurbanova from the top five in the WBO rankings," said Titov.

Kurbanov is being pushed as fast as his promoters can push him. He currently has 11 wins (9 by KO), and no losses. Mosley is a future Hall of Famer with 49 wins (40 by KO), ten defeats and one draw.

At one time Mosley was considered to be one of the best pound for pound fighters in boxing and earned tens of millions of dollars with world titles captured at 135, 147 and 154. He announced his retirement in 2013 after suffering a TKO defeat at the hands of Anthony Mundine, but in 2015 he returned to the ring and secured a knockout win in his rematch with Nicaraguan Ricardo Mayorga. After that, Mosley racked in a win over Venezuelan Patrick Lopes and then lost a decision to David Avanesyan.