This excerpt came from this week;s edition of te Fightful Boxing Newsletter, which releases every week:
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News And Notes From Around The World Of Boxing:
Europe:
1. British bantamweight prospect Sean McGoldrick will make his return to the ring at the Sky Sports-aired card on February 3 at the O2 Arena in London. An opponent has been announced for McGoldrick. That card will be headlined by Isaac Chamberlain vs. Lawrence Okolie.
2. According to Showtime Sports Executive Vice President Stephen Espinoza, the network is interested in televising the planned fight between Carl Frampton and Nonito Donaire, scheduled to take place on April 7 in Belfast, Ireland. Donaire has undergone changes to his team. He signed with Richard Schaefer's Ringstar Sports this year after a long run with former HBO partner Top Rank. If Showtime elects to broadcast the fight, it may not necessarily be on television. The network has experimented as of late with showing fights live out of the U.K. on YouTube and on Facebook and the fight could be another test run for Showtime's still growing online streaming experiment.
3. WBA super welterweight interim champion Brian Carlos Castano will return to France in March, according to netboxe.com, and defend the title against former EBU titleholder Cedric Vitu. Vitu won an IBF eliminator in May and has been waiting since then for his chance to fight Castano.
4. The WBA/IBF/WBO heavyweight unification clash between Anthony Joshua and Joseph Parker looms closer with each passing day. According to Parker's team, both sides have agreed to the purse split, which will give Parker around 30-35 percent of the purse. The fight is very close to being signed and some minor details need to be ironed out, but for all intents and purposes, the fight is a done deal. The date and venue has not been decided yet, but sources say that there is a strong likelihood that the fight will take place between March 31 and April 14. A venue has yet to be decided, but if Joshua's past fights are any indication, this fight will be at one of the United Kingdom's many stadiums.
5. The undercard information for the January 5 card in Copenhagen, Denmark has been revealed. A total of four title fights will take place on the card, currently headlined by a super middleweight bout between Lolenga Mock and Dmitrii Chudinov. The top undercard fights are the following:
- Sven Fornling (c) vs. Jeppe Morell: IBF Light Heavyweight Baltic title
- Danish fighters (c) vs. Jonas Madsen: IBF Youth Light Heavyweight title
- Enock Mwandila Poulsen vs. Guadalupe Acosta: Vacant IBF super lightweight title
- Ditlev Rossing vs Miguel Angel Peralta: Vacant WBC Youth World cruiserweight title
Asia:
1. T.J. Doheny defeated Mike Tawatchai via unanimous decision in an IBF junior featherweight world title elimination bout in Bangkok, Thailand. Doheny won 117-111 and 116-112 on two scorecards while one judge had it 115-113 for Tawatchai. With the victory, Doheny earned a mandatory shot at the 122-pound world title held by Ryosuke Iwasa.
2. During a special signing ceremony in Japan, the officials for the Ken Shiro vs. Gilberto Pedroza WBC junior flyweight title bout have been announced. Lawrence Cole will serve as the referee, with the judges being Ed Pearson, Hubert Minn and Timothy Cheatham.
North and Latin America:
1. Not much has been discussed regarding the likely WBA unification fight between "super" champion Leo Santa Cruz and "regular" champion Abner Mares. Schaefer said in an interview that he hopes to have the fight take place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles sometime in April or May. Schaefer also said making the fight at Staples Center would be hard considering the high number of professional sports teams that compete at the venue.
2. A deal has been reached between WBC super featherweight world champion Miguel Berchelt and Cristian Mijares. The two will fight in Cancun on February 10 at a venue to be determined. The event will be promoted by Max Abraham's Max Boxing, Fernando Beltran of Zanfer Promotions, Pepe Gomez of Cancun Boxing, and Boxing Time Promotions by Guillermo Rocha.
3. El Matador Management, Inc. has signed middleweight contender, Lamar "The Boxing Que" Russ. Felipe Gomez will now be managing the career of Russ, who hails from Wilmington, North Carolina. Gomez will work closely with DiBella Entertainment (Russ' Promoter) as they jointly look to keep Russ busy, while guiding him toward a potential world title fight within the next couple of years.
4. Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Sports and Entertainment promotional company will hold the Jose Sulaiman World Invitational, a tournament contested by boxers in the welterweight division who are eligible to qualify for the governing body's top 40. The tournament will be an eight-man, single elimination tournament set to start in 2018. This tournament will experiment with several new ideas mostly untested in the professional ranks. For starters, fights in the first two rounds will be 10-rounds, experiment with open, standardized scoring, and five judges will be scoring the bout: four at ringside and a fifth one watching the fight via television monitor with that judge not being able to listen to any audio commentary. If the fight goes the distance and it is still declared a draw, then an 11th round will be contested to declare a winner. The field has yet to be determined with applications running through January.
Puerto Rico:
1. WBA ranked #13, Alfredo 'Ojo' Santiago and highly touted prospect, Subriel Matias Matthew, both from Fajardo, Puerto Rico, will be seeing action on February 17, 2018 at the Fajardo Municipal Equestrian Park. Opponents will be announced soon by Fresh Productions. This card would be one of the first fight cards in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria ravaged the island back in September.
2. According to a report, there is currently work going on for WBO junior flyweight champion Angel Acosta to make his first defense in early April, and the opponent they are looking at facing is WBO mandatory challenger Ryuji Hara. It seems the original plan was to face a voluntary, with Hara stepping aside though Hara has shown a willingness to travel to Puerto Rico for the fight, and it sounds like that decision has opened the door to the contest taking place in early 2018.
