Roy Jones' promoter dismissed out of hand yesterday's claims from the Steve Collins camp that the fighters had agreed to a world title fight in April. Murad Muhammed described the chances of the fight taking place as "between slim and none".

At the same time, Home Box Office, the American cable network which has Jones under long-term contract, repeated their pessimism from earlier in the week about the fight going ahead.

"I am the promoter for Roy Jones Jr," Muhammed said, "and you may be assured that anything I say has the approval of Roy.

"Right now I would put the chances of a Jones-Collins fight happening somewhere between slim and none. I think Collins must be looking for publicity in his country, and that he will get, but it has no validity.

"Neither Steve nor his lawyer has talked to me since they were in Pensacola, and they can't make a deal with anybody else. At the kind of figures they're talking about, it ain't happening. Steve Collins don't look to be a possibility."

Muhammed also suggested that Collins has an inflated sense of what the fight would be worth in Britain and Ireland - where it would be shown at 3.0 a.m.

"We explored the possibility of a pay-per-view arrangement with Sky television. They estimate the maximum number of buys at 250,000, with no guarantee. Our understanding is that Collins is under the impression he can earn about $2 million, but right now we wouldn't be prepared to offer Collins any more than half a million dollars as a guarantee, and frankly, it's beginning to look like Roy can make more by fighting (IBF light-heavyweight champion) Reggie Johnson anyway."

When asked about a statement in USA Today which quoted one of Jones' lawyers, Stanley Levin, as predicting an April 17th Collins fight, Muhammed said. "I don't know where they got that from unless it was taken out of context. Stanley can't make a deal on his own and, if he said that, it wouldn't even be a good negotiating tactic! I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was misquoted."

Yesterday an HBO executive, Kery Davis, said: "We're no more interested today than we were yesterday.

"If you do the arithmetic, it doesn't make sense to us," said Davis. "And beyond that, after Jones' last two fights we feel an obligation to put him in against an opponent the public would consider formidable. Collins might or might not be formidable, but he hasn't fought in two years, and if Roy blasts him out in two rounds then we'd look bad."

Of Collins' press conference in Dublin yesterday, Davis had a two-word answer: "They're nuts!" Last Saturday night in Florida Jones took only two rounds to destroy the challenge of New York policeman Rick Frazier. Collins was at the fight, and immediately stepped into the ring to confront Jones as soon as the referee had taken Frazier into protective custody.

Throughout Saturday Collins and his Dublin solicitor, Brian Delahunt, had been in a whirlwind of discussions with Jones' lawyers, Muhammed and HBO.

Each of the parties described the talks as fruitful and productive and expressed confidence that a Jones-Collins fight could be set up for later in the year, but Collins' claim that he will furnish the opposition for Jones' next defence is probably premature.

Also waiting in the wings for Jones are Reggie Johnson, the current IBF light-heavyweight champion, and a pair of European lightheavies, Graciano Rocchigiani and WBO champion Dariusz Michalczewski.