Errol Spence Jr. and Shawn Porter will now have their welterweight title unification on pay-per-view.
The two welterweight champions will unify the WBC and IBF titles on September 28 on a FOX pay-per-view event from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The fight will be Spence’s second straight on pay-per-view while it will be Porter’s first as a pay-per-view headliner.
Spence won the IBF 147-pound title in 2017 when he traveled to the United Kingdom and beat Kell Brook. Spence didn’t fight for the rest of the year, but returned in January 2018 and soundly beat Lamont Peterson in Brooklyn, followed by a first-round win over Carlos Ocampo in Texas later in June. Afterwards, Spence and Mikey Garcia began speaking about a possible fight down the road. The two had their showdown, Garcia’s first shot at a welterweight title, this past March on pay-per-view at AT&T Stadium and Spence dominated Garcia en route to a unanimous decision win.
Porter has been a long-time main stay in the welterweight division, beginning with an IBF title win in 2013. After losing the title in 2014 to Brook, Porter worked his way back up to a title shot, but lost to Keith Thurman in 2016. Since then, Porter has gone on to win four straight fights, including a WBC welterweight title victory against Danny Garcia last September and then a successful title defense against Yordenis Ugas back in March.
But that’s not the only fight that was announced. Also on the card is a WBC super middleweight title between Anthony Dirrell and David Benavidez which will serve as the co-main event of the pay-per-view.
Benavidez once held the title from 2017 to 2018 but his reign came to an end after he tested positive for the central compound found in cocaine. Benavidez was moved to “Champion in Recess” and the title was then vacant.
Dirrell won the title earlier this year by beating Avni Yildirim by technical decision. Yildirim protested the result and the WBC announced that Benavidez would get his shot at Dirrell’s title next, but Yildirim would get to fight the winner of that fight down the road.
