by David P. Greisman
The April 18 bout between lightweight champion Terence Crawford and junior-welterweight contender Thomas Dulorme will be for the vacant World Boxing Organization title at 140 pounds, according to a tweet from Jose R. Izquierdo II, the WBO’s general secretary.
The winner must face Chris Algieri next.
Algieri previouslt held the WBO belt after his June 2014 split decision win over Ruslan Provodnikov. He was forced to give it up when he moved to welterweight and challenged Manny Pacquiao for Pacquiao’s WBO title at 147 later in the year.
Crawford was the WBO titleholder at 135. He is coming off a decision win over Ray Beltran last November that moved him to 25-0 with 17 KOs. Dulorme topped Henry Lundy in December by split decision, moving to 22-1 with 14 KOs.
HBO will be airing a split-site broadcast that day, with a fight between Lucas Matthysse and Ruslan Provodnikov taking place in Verona, New York. No location had been announced yet for Crawford-Dulorme, though boxing writer Michael Woods tweeted Friday morning that it could wind up in the Dallas area in Arlington, Texas.
Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com
