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The WBA announced today that Matchroom Boxing narrowly outbid Golden Boy Promotions to secure control of unified super bantamweight champion Murodjon Akhmadaliev’s mandatory title defense against Ronny Rios and now intend to stage it on August 21st in either New York, Los Angeles, or Tashkent.
Matchroom offered $525,555 to Golden Boy’s $508,000. The champion will receive 75%, the challenger 25%.
In a perfect world, this fight’s winner would go on to meet either Stephen Fulton or Brandon Figueroa in a clash for undisputed status after they fight on September 11th, so the August date works out perfectly.
That’s not to say this matchup is worth overlooking, of course; Rios (33-3, 16 KO) appears to be in the finest form of his career and will undoubtedly make Akhmadaliev (9-0, 7 KO) work for it despite the latter’s technical brilliance. Now to see how many of Matchroom’s other Uzbek standouts they’ll cram into the undercard.