Just four months after losing his WBA lightweight title to Vasiliy Lomachenko, Jorge Linares will step into the ring to get back on the championship path.
Golden Boy Promotions announced Linares will fight Abner Cotto in the main event of a fight card streamed on Facebook on September 29. The fight will be contested at 140 pounds and it takes place at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California.
Linares will be fighting without a world title around his waist for the first time since 2014. Having won the WBC and WBA lightweight titles, Linares has been arguably the most successful and consistent lightweights in the past few years. Linares won the WBC title with a fourth-round knockout win over Francisco Javier Prieto in 2014 and then won the WBA title in 2016 when won a unanimous decision over Anthony Crolla. Linares then lost the WBA title with a ninth-round knockout loss to Lomachenko this past May at Madison Square Garden on ESPN.
Cotto, a member of the Cotto family and second cousin to four-division champion Miguel Cotto, has always been a mainstay at both lightweight and junior welterweight, but has yet to fight at an elite, world-class level. The 31-year-old Cotto sports a 23-3 record and has faced the likes of Javier Fortuna, Omar Figueroa Jr. and Francisco Vargas.
The card will be the third boxing card Golden Boy promotes that will be streamed exclusively on Facebook since the promotion and the social media giant agreed to a five-card deal earlier this summer.
