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Top Rank, still licking its wounds after the Adonis Stevenson-Oleksandr Gvozdyk debacle, got back in the purse bid win column today and secured the rights to Ray Beltran’s WBO lightweight title defense against top contender Roman Andreev.
Top Rank won purse bid for the Beltran-Andreev WBO lightweight title fight with bid of $252,000. Fight will be 8/25 on ESPN in Glendale. Isaac Dogboe v Hidenori Otake on undercard
— Kevin Iole (@KevinI) July 3, 2018
Beltran (35-7-1, 21 KO) won the belt he failed to take from Terence Crawford in 2014, then lost a shot at due to missing weight and failing a drug test against Takahiro Ao, in February with a grueling win over Paulus Moses. He’s on a hot streak at age 36, scoring vicious knockouts of Mason Menard and Jonathan Maicelo in his current 6-0 run.
Andreev (21-0, 15 KO) has an unspectacular record and, despite a relatively small number of fights, hits the 10-year anniversary of his pro debut in just over two weeks. He’s also just four years younger than Beltran.
We’ve been over Dogboe vs. Otake, which is a good matchup, so this looks like a very solid ESPN doubleheader.