George Kambosos Jr. has confirmed that his lightweight title fight against Teofimo Lopez has a new date.
Kambosos told Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole on Tuesday that he’ll challenge Lopez on June 19 at loanDepot Park in Miami, the home stadium of Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins. The Lopez-Kambosos bout initially was supposed to headline a Triller Fight Club pay-per-view show June 5 at loanDepot Park.
BoxingScene first reported last week that Triller Fight Club was seriously considering moving the Lopez-Kambosos card to June 19. Triller Fight Club won an IBF purse bid February 25 to earn the right to promote the bout between Brooklyn’s Lopez (16-0, 12 KOs) and Australia’s Kambosos (19-0, 10 KOs), the mandatory challenger for Lopez’s IBF 135-pound championship.
Yahoo! Sports also reported two Lopez-Kambosos undercard bouts Tuesday.
Michael Hunter (19-1-1, 13 KOs), a heavyweight contender from Las Vegas, will meet Mike Wilson (21-1, 10 KOs), of Medford, Oregon, in a 10-rounder. Andy Vences (23-2-1, 12 KOs), of San Jose, California, and Ireland’s Jono Carroll (19-2-1, 5 KOs) also are set to meet in a 10-round junior lightweight bout.
The Lopez-Kambosos pay-per-view event will now air on the same night as three other boxing shows in the United States and another pay-per-view card in Mexico.
ESPN is scheduled to televise a card headlined by Japanese star Naoya Inoue that night from Las Vegas. Inoue (20-0, 17 KOs) is set to make a mandatory defense of his IBF bantamweight title against the Philippines’ Michael Dasmarinas (30-2-1, 20 KOs) in ESPN’s main event June 19 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
Showtime also is set to air a tripleheader June 19 that’ll feature WBC middleweight champ Jermall Charlo (31-0, 22 KOs) from an undetermined venue in Houston, Charlo’s hometown. Charlo will make an optional defense of his 160-pound championship against Mexico’s Juan Macias Montiel (22-4-2, 22 KOs) in Showtime’s main event that night.
Also June 19, Mexican middleweight contender Jaime Munguia (36-0, 29 KOs) and Poland’s Maciej Sulecki (29-2, 11 KOs) will square off in the main event of a DAZN stream from the University of Texas at El Paso’s Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas.
The pay-per-view show that’ll compete with Lopez-Kambosos will feature Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in a 10-round boxing match against former UFC star Anderson Silva. Chavez’s legendary father also is scheduled to box Hector Camacho Jr. in an exhibition on the Chavez Jr.-Silva card June 19 at Jalisco Stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico.
By Keith Idec (BoxingScene)