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Vic Darchinyan will get his first featherweight title shot on May 31 in Macau, as the former flyweight and super flyweight titleholder will take on WBA "regular" champ Nicholas Walters on the Donaire-Vetyeka undercard.
Darchinyan (39-6-1, 28 KO) is coming off of a TKO-9 loss to Donaire last November, a fight he mostly dominated before Donaire's power caught up to him late in the fight. The 38-year-old Darchinyan has gone 0-2 in world title fights over 115 pounds, both at bantamweight.
Walters (23-0, 19 KO) is a 28-year-old Jamaican fighter with a pretty unproven record, but he'll be a good bit bigger than Darchinyan, and he's fresher, too. But Vic is still a pretty damn good fighter, and he's shown a lot more over his career than Walters has, and been in with far better opposition, even if they weren't featherweights.
Walters was originally scheduled to face Alejandro Perez, who was upset in a tune-up fight last weekend.
Along with Donaire-Vetyeka and Walters-Darchinyan, there will be a third featherweight title bout on the card, as Evgeny Gradovich defends his IBF crown against Yasutaka Ishimoto.