The featherweight titleholder will be back on ESPN in less than two months.
As previously reported, WBO featherweight titleholder Oscar Valdez will indeed make the sixth defense of his title on June 8, manager Frank Espinoza confirms, with the fight airing as a main event of a Top Rank Boxing on ESPN show.
Valdez (25-0, 20 KO) doesn’t have an opponent yet, and the fight is less than two months away, so probably don’t get your hopes up much. Espinoza says that if Valdez wins in June, he hopes for a fight with former super bantamweight and featherweight titleholder Carl Frampton (26-2, 15 KO), who recently signed a co-promotional deal with Top Rank. Mind you, he’s not saying that will happen, but that he hopes it will.
The 28-year-old Valdez has become one of the sport’s most reliable action stars in recent years, which we saw the potential for back when he was fighting for Mexico at the 2012 Olympics in London.
Valdez went to war with an overweight Scott Quigg in March 2018, retaining his title but suffering a broken jaw that kept him out the rest of the year. He returned on Feb. 2 in Texas, knocking out Italy’s Carmine Tommasone in the seventh round.
Like pretty much everything anymore, Valdez-TBA on June 8 seems likely to run into eyeball competition for viewers watching from home. It’s possible that Gennady Golovkin will be making his DAZN debut that night, though not set in stone yet.
