P.J. Goossen KOd by an Elusive Foe : Boxing: Mysterious ailment keeps Palmdale junior middleweight out of tonight’s main event at Warner Center Marriott.

Good news, bad news for P.J. Goossen.

The good news: The undefeated, Palmdale-based junior middleweight is scheduled to fight for the North American Boxing Organization championship early next year.

The bad news: Goossen, who is 16-0 with 11 knockouts, won’t be headlining tonight’s card at the Warner Center Marriott. It is, after all, the cold and flu season.

Goossen has all of the symptoms: headache, high temperature, nausea, listlessness. But he wouldn’t be concerned had he not been feeling sick for almost a month and weak for even longer.

During a training session last week he decided he could go on no longer. “My head was cloudy and I couldn’t move,” Goossen said. “My legs just were not there.”

Goossen had blood tests last Friday but Tuesday still was waiting for the results.

Gerrie Coetzee, who promotes monthly shows at the Marriott, said the illness does not change his plans to match Goossen against former world champion Rene Arredondo (46-10, 40 KOs) for the NABO title. But Goossen must dispatch Ruben Ruiz first.

Ruiz, 14-2, was to fight Goossen in the main event tonight. That matchup will now be pushed back at least a month.

Most of Goossen’s fights have been against unheralded competition, but Ruiz is considered a legitimate test.

“I decided to step him up and see what kind of fighter he is,” said Coetzee, who has a promotional agreement with Goossen. “I think he’s a lot better than what I saw the last time he fought [at the Marriott].”

Goossen was anything but sharp while winning a unanimous decision over Eric McNair at the Marriott in September.

Some of that, Goossen said, was because of a chronic injury to his right hand that he aggravated early in the fight. But he said he wasn’t feeling completely healthy even then.

“Last fight I looked terrible,” Goossen said. “I don’t want to go out and look like that again. If I fight [today] I go in maybe 20%. I don’t want to look [bad] and have people think anything bad of me. I want them to see me at my best.”

Coetzee was going to replace the Goossen-Ruiz matchup with a bout featuring Gary Ballard. However, on Monday, Ballard (20-2-1, 17 KOs) was summoned to Hamburg, Germany to face Dariusz (Tiger) Michalczewski for the World Boxing Organization light heavyweight championship Saturday.

The main event on tonight’s seven-bout card now is an eight-round junior middleweight bout between Fili (Boom Boom) Castro and Rodney Jones.

Castro, from Sonora, Mexico, is 14-2 with 12 KOs. He pounded highly regarded Floyd Weaver at the Marriott last month, knocking him down four times and stopping him at 2:12 of the second round.

On the same card, Jones, a southpaw stablemate of Terry Norris, stopped Ramon Baez. Jones, from Campo, Calif., is 8-2.

Tonight’s undercard, which begins at 7:30, promises to be entertaining with the local debut of featherweight Paul Paez, the flashy and colorful cousin of Jorge Paez, better known as “the clown prince of boxing.”

Paez, who has been a tightrope performer in Mexican circuses, has a record of 1-5-1, according to State Athletic Commission inspector Dean Lohius. When he scheduled the fight, Coetzee was under the impression that Paez was something like 16-0--with 16 KOs.

Perhaps Paez is also a juggler. His opponent in a scheduled six-round bout is Ofvaldo Valenzuela, 8-2-1 with five KOs.

In other six-round bouts, David (El Galan) Benjinez meets Robert Alvarez in a matchup of super bantamweights, and Tiger Small faces Sergio Sanchez in a featherweight fight.

Benjinez has a record of 17-5 with 15 KOs. Alvarez is 19-2 with nine KOs. Small is 5-1-1 with three KOs. Sanchez is 6-3 with two KOs.

In bouts scheduled for four rounds, Robert Galstyan (1-0) meets Felipe Parra (4-5, two KOs) in a matchup of light heavyweights; Francisco Rios makes his debut as a lightweight against Miguel Angel Ruiz (7-3, three KOs); and Jovo Pudar makes his debut as a heavyweight against Roberto Ramirez (0-2).