Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter’s long-awaited grudge match for the WBC welterweight title has officially been announced.
Garcia and Porter, both mandatory challengers for the WBC title that is currently vacant, will fight for the belt on September 8 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The fight will headline a Showtime Championship Boxing telecast. Although no undercard fights were announced, it is heavily speculated that the co-feature bout will be a WBC super middleweight title fight between David Benavidez and Anthony Dirrell.
After Keith Thurman defeated Garcia back in March 2017 to unify the WBA and WBC titles, Thurman underwent elbow surgery and has yet to return to the ring. A few months ago, Thurman vacated the WBC title as he had not defended it, but is still the WBA "super" champion.
Porter became the mandatory challenger for the title last year when he won a title eliminator against Andre Berto. With Thurman still out of action at the time, the WBC sought to put Thurman and Garcia in an interim title fight, but the two sides were unable to come to an agreement. Porter then won the WBC Silver title last year with a win over Adrian Granados.
Garcia, on the other hand, fought once since the loss to Thurman. Back in February, Garcia knocked out Brandon Rios in a secondary title eliminator with Garcia being the mandatory challenger after Porter. When Thurman vacated the title, Garcia and Porter were then ordered by WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman to fight for the vacant title.
