WBC welterweight tournament continues August 25th

The “Jose Sulaiman World Invitational” semifinals go down next month after a first round that saw the #1 seed lose to an alternate. August 25th will see #2 Chris Van Heerden face #3 Fredrick Lawson and #8 Francisco Santana fight #5 Brad Solomon in Toronto.

Sergey Lubkovich, who beat Karim Mayfield in April and will appear on this undercard, will serve as an alternate.

Santana (25-6-1, 12 KO) was the big story of the quarterfinals, upsetting tourney favorite Felix Diaz via majority decision. Van Heerden (26-2-1, 12 KO) and Lawson (27-1, 21 KO) took comfortable unanimous decisions over their respective foes, while Solomon (28-1, 9 KO) had to get off the canvas to scrape out a split decision over alternate Paddy Gallagher.

The press release claims that the ultimate winner of this tournament will “be in a position to fight for the WBC Welterweight World Title in 2019.” To be frank, it’s hard to picture any of these guys having a shot against Danny Garcia or Shawn Porter. Still some fun fights to be had in the meantime, though.