By Dan Ambrose: It looks like former IBF/WBA featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboas (21-0, 16 KO’s) has an out if he decides to pull out of his scheduled April 14th HBO televised bout against former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (29-0-1, 22 KO’s) at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. According to Dan Rafael at ESPN, the 30-year-old Gamboa never signed a bout agreement for the fight.

Gamboa still hadn’t signed the official bout agreement for the fight, and that in itself could be enough for Gamboa to wriggle out of taking the fight if he feels that the conditions weren’t right for him to take this risky gamble. Earlier on Monday, Gamboa failed to show up for his scheduled press conference in Miami, Florida with Brandon Rios to start building momentum in the press for their April 14th fight. It wasn’t as if Gamboa missed a flight or anything, because he lives in Miami.

There reportedly was no phone or anything from Gamboa alerting his promoters of him not showing up for the press conference. There’s another press conference on Tuesday in Los Angeles, California and nobody knows if Gamboa will show up for that one. It’s possible that he could show up and say that he got caught up in something. That would be the ideal situation but it’s not looking good right now with him blowing off the conference and not letting anyone know about it.

I think it was a bad idea for Gamboa to agree to this fight in the first place without first testing himself at super featherweight and then at lightweight against softer targets than Rios. This is a big fighter that comes in well over 135 for his fights. Gamboa might be the faster guy by far, but if he’s facing a much bigger Rios, who could be sporting a 15 to 20 weight advantage over Gamboa, that would be a really tough situation for the guy.