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By Jake Donovan - Joan Guzman and Ali Funeka, you can now exhale. Your unscheduled vacant title fight appears to have finally found a home.
Boxingscene.com was informed Tuesday evening that Golden Boy Promotions, who earlier this summer signed Guzman to a promotional deal, won a purse bid held earlier in the day for the IBF-ordered title fight. Their winning bid of 212,000 was just enough to edge out the next highest submission of 202,000 placed by Gary Shaw Productions, the US promoter of record for Funeka.
Early plans call for the fight to land on November 28 in Canada beneath the HBO-televised super middleweight title fight rematch between Lucian Bute and Librado Andrade, a fight for which Golden Boy also won the purse bid. No word on whether or not this fight will be added to the broadcast, or appear on the non-televised undercard portion of the show.
At the very least, the announcement brings momentary resolution to what has been a wild roller coaster ride in making this fight a reality.
Guzman (29-0, 17KO) hasn’t fought since a December 2008 homecoming win over Ameth Diaz in the Dominican Republic. He was originally scheduled to face Yuri Romanov shortly after the alphabet title was made available by Nate Campbell, who relinquished the title on the scales prior to his gutty win over Funeka earlier this year.
Funkea (30-2, 25KO), who hasn’t fought since the razor-thin loss to Campbell in his lone stateside-televised appearance, was only added to the title picture by process of elimination. [details]
Boxingscene.com was informed Tuesday evening that Golden Boy Promotions, who earlier this summer signed Guzman to a promotional deal, won a purse bid held earlier in the day for the IBF-ordered title fight. Their winning bid of 212,000 was just enough to edge out the next highest submission of 202,000 placed by Gary Shaw Productions, the US promoter of record for Funeka.
Early plans call for the fight to land on November 28 in Canada beneath the HBO-televised super middleweight title fight rematch between Lucian Bute and Librado Andrade, a fight for which Golden Boy also won the purse bid. No word on whether or not this fight will be added to the broadcast, or appear on the non-televised undercard portion of the show.
At the very least, the announcement brings momentary resolution to what has been a wild roller coaster ride in making this fight a reality.
Guzman (29-0, 17KO) hasn’t fought since a December 2008 homecoming win over Ameth Diaz in the Dominican Republic. He was originally scheduled to face Yuri Romanov shortly after the alphabet title was made available by Nate Campbell, who relinquished the title on the scales prior to his gutty win over Funeka earlier this year.
Funkea (30-2, 25KO), who hasn’t fought since the razor-thin loss to Campbell in his lone stateside-televised appearance, was only added to the title picture by process of elimination. [details]
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