Pascal-Diaconu rematch made official for December 11

Jean Pascal took the WBC light heavyweight title from Adrian Diaconu on June 19 in Montreal, and now the two will head back to the Bell Centre for a rematch on December 11.

Pascal (24-1, 16 KO) has fought once since his win over Diaconu, a 10th round stoppage of veteran Silvio Branco. Diaconu (26-1, 15 KO) has been inactive since his first career defeat, waiting on the rematch. The first fight was really good, and televised in the U.S. by Versus. But with Versus' issues right now and the fact that they look like they're just out of boxing, don't expect that a second time. Hopefully someone in the U.S. will step up and grab this fight. Showtime has a history of nabbing fights like this, but their budget is probably done for the rest of 2009 with the Super Six, Bradley-Peterson and Agbeko-Perez all coming up. ESPN has picked up a few meaningful fights in the last couple years (Wladimir-Chagaev, Vitali-Gomez, Bell-Adamek), and hopefully this could fit in there. Anywhere, really. Even if this has to go to small PPV with Integrated Sports, I think I'd be willing to pay $25 or so for this, and do so fairly happily.

That last option can also be sweetened if the rumored Kendall Holt-Herman Ngoudjo fight is added to this show's undercard. The two junior welterweight contenders have been in talks to meet in an eliminator bout, and it would be a perfect co-feature for this main event.

The press release for the Pascal-Diaconu rematch also noted that Pascal will be in Nottingham this weekend to cheer on his former foe, Carl Froch. It was the Froch-Pascal war from last December that truly put both on the map for a lot of people, so nice to see how much respect they have for one another after a great fight that raised the stock on both of them.