I haven't done much texturing but my first thought is that if I wanted to try and keep the uv's, i would just select those faces and then use harden edge under the normals menu set...instead of deleting them and using fill hole. But again, I haven't done much texturing so I don't really know.
Don't be satisfied with what you can do but rather strive to do the things you can't do!
Exceed Expectations!