Dean Sutherland felt doing boxing shows without an audience would have detracted from the sport.
Amid the raft of measures taken against the coronavirus pandemic, the British Boxing Board of Control announced on Tuesday all shows would be cancelled, with the situation to be reviewed in April. Aberdeen fighter Sutherland had been due to compete at Trump Turnberry this weekend, but when it became difficult to get an opponent finalised, he contacted manager Sam Kynoch to pull out.
There had been discussions about doing shows behind closed doors, which would not have appealed to the unbeaten 21-year-old.
Sutherland said: “The safety of spectators comes first.
“There was no question of doing shows behind closed doors – it’s an entertainment business and if you take away fans then it just becomes a business. No one wants to be involved in that.
“The entertainment side of things, as a fighter myself, I want to go feed off the crowd and impress it, draw from the atmosphere to improve my performance. If you can hear a pin drop then that’s not going to help in any way.”
The southpaw intends to keep training as much as possible through the shutdown, in preparation for any resumption of the sport.
He added: “Everyone is in the same boat so it doesn’t affect things in a sporting sense. It’s affecting other sports and it’s sad being a sports fan, with the amount that’s being cancelled. It’s taken a massive hit.
“Every single day it has a much bigger impact. Until you break it down to it affecting your discipline, you then see how big a problem it is.”