Bruce Carrington won’t have to wait beyond his next fight to upgrade his interim 126lbs title.
He will, however, have to fight for that right.
BoxingScene has confirmed that Carrington’s planned showdown with Carlos Castro will now come with the vacant WBC featherweight title at stake. Their scheduled 12-round bout will take place as a supporting bout to the January 31 Teofimo Lopez-Shakur Stevenson DAZN pay-per-view main event from Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Carrington, 16-0 (9 KOs), currently holds a secondary version of the WBC 126lbs belt. The previously recognized full titlist was Stephen Fulton, who vacated the title shortly after his 12-round defeat to O’Shaquie Foster well outside the weight division.
Fulton missed weight for a planned challenge of Foster’s WBC 130lbs title and is clearly no longer able to compete at featherweight.
Under normal circumstances, it would mean an instant upgrade for an existing secondary titlist.
However, the WBC instead declared the full title vacant and now up for grabs with this already confirmed matchup.
Brooklyn’s Carrington gets a home game for the occasion. The night will mark his seventh career appearance at an MSG property. His most recent bout came at MSG Theater, where he outpointed unbeaten Mateus Heita to win the WBC interim featherweight belt.
The fight served as the co-feature to Top Rank’s last-ever show on ESPN, the end of its seven-year exclusive output deal with the network. Top Rank has yet to secure a new platform for its massive roster but has managed to piecemeal opportunities for talent such as Carrington.
Castro, 30-3 (14 KOs), will enter his first major title fight, though he doesn’t lack championship-level experience.
Remarkably, the Phoenix-based contender – originally from Mexico – has managed to face three former major titleholders. They have resulted in his three career defeats, all in non-title fights.
He dropped a contentious split decision to former two-division titlist Luis Nery in February 2022, with a suffered first-round knockdown marking the difference on the cards. Castro was then stopped inside of six rounds by Brandon Figueroa in July 2022, in between Figueroa’s separate title tours at 122lbs and 126lbs.
A three-fight win streak followed before Castro’s most recent outing. Many considered him unlucky to not get the nod versus Fulton in their 10-round contest last September 14 in Las Vegas. Castro floored Fulton – in his debut at 126lbs following the end of his unified 122lbs title reign – in the fifth round but still came up just short on two of the three cards.
The loss proved costly, as it was Fulton and not Castro who went on to fight for and win the WBC 126lbs title in his next fight.
Despite having not fought since then, Castro managed to hang around the contender level just long enough to land in the right place at the right time.
