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Former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver's ring return was supposed to coincide with the return of boxing on ABC, but Tarver's fight has been postponed and the network's comeback may have been knocked out.

Promoter Joe DeGuardia pulled the plug this week on Tarver's April 22 fight against Elvir Muriqi (34-3, 21 KOs). The 12-round bout was supposed to take place in the 3,000-seat room upstairs at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J.

There were numerous problems finalizing sponsorship deals and delivering acceptable commercials to ABC, which was not paying a license fee to air the fight. Under the deal, DeGuardia was going to buy the one-hour block of time on a Sunday afternoon and sell commercial spots. ESPN, which oversees sports programming on sister network ABC, was going to produce the telecast.

Had DeGuardia gone through with the deal as it stood at ABC's early-week deadline, he was looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses. With time running short and the fight still not officially announced -- although tickets have been on sale for a couple of weeks -- he had to call off the show.

DeGuardia declined to discuss specifics of the deal, but he said the postponement was "due to a combination of factors."

"I'll speak to both fighters and determine their schedules and see what dates make sense to reschedule the fight," DeGuardia told ESPN.com. "We want to properly promote it and we were running out of time. I know the fighters have trained and were at the stage where they were peaking. I expect it to take place before the mid-summer."

Whether ABC, which hasn't televised a fight since June 17, 2000, is involved in a rescheduled bout remains to be seen.

"I'd love to have it on ABC, but I will have to talk them. It's complicated because you have to clear time," DeGuardia said. "Right now my primary focus is to work to see that the fight takes place one way or another."

Tarver (24-4, 18 KOs), 38, who is trying to rebound from losing a the light heavyweight championship to Bernard Hopkins in June 2006 in lopsided fashion, emphatically denied rumors that the fight was called off because he is not in shape.

"I woke up this morning at 182 pounds in great shape and ready to go," Tarver told ESPN.com from his Florida training camp. "Contrary to what people are saying, the fight is not off because I am not in shape. That is a lie. I am in great shape and ready, willing and able to satisfy my end of the bargain. For whatever reason, the fight was postponed. But it had nothing to do with Antonio Tarver. This is my comeback fight and I am taking every fight deadly serious."

Tarver said he understands the business of boxing and that mounting an expensive promotion with no guaranteed television money is difficult.

"Joe had guaranteed me a minimum purse and when they got into the thick of things it may have been hard to realize that," Tarver said. "It may have been harder with network TV than they anticipated. We had to go out and secure sponsorships. Maybe they were not paying the type of money that was anticipated. There is only so much you can do in the short amount of time we had to do it."

Tarver said he would take one week off and then get back in camp and wait for the fight to be rescheduled, hopefully on ABC.

"I'll be ready whenever it is," he said. "I want to get three fights in this year and let people know I am back. I'm staying in shape. That's going to be the difference. Hopefully, we can still do this on ABC. I want to take my fight to network TV so people can see me without paying for it on pay-per-view or having to pay extra for premium cable. I'm heartbroken that we couldn't get this done. Hopefully, we can in the future."