Oscar Collazo: record, next fight and profile →
A final pre-fight press conference to kick off the Boxing Hall of Fame Induction Weekend and prime fans for Friday's Oscar Collazo-Gerardo Zapata card was held on Thursday.
Pick It: Xander Zayas vs. Patrick Teixeira When to Watch: Saturday, June 8, 11 p.m. Eastern Time / 4 a.m. BST How to watch: ESPN, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+ in the United States; Sky Sports in the United Kingdom
The undercard for the battle between Puerto Rico’s WBO strawweight boss Oscar Collazo (9-0, 7 KOs) and Nicaragua’s Gerardo Zapata (14-1-1, 5 KOs) on Friday June 7 has been finalized.
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Oscar Collazo sees enough room in his year to fight the entire Shigeoka family. The trio of unbeaten titlists are part of a new wave of strawweights talented and entertaining enough to entice an audience beyond the sport’s most fervent fanbase. Puerto Rico’s Collazo holds the WBO belt, while the WBC and IBF titles belong to Yudai and Ginjiro Shigeoka, respectively.
Unification bouts are hopefully on the horizon for Oscar Collazo. For now, a mandatory title defense is likely in his immediate future. The unbeaten WBO strawweight titlist awaits his marching orders for his next bout, with a mid-spring date targeted in his native Puerto Rico. Collazo (9-0, 7KOs) has already made two successful defenses of the belt he claimed last May, the most recent which came in a third-round knockout of Reyneris Gutierrez on January 27 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Oscar Collazo has every intention to honor the company-wide challenge set by his promoter, and also to force him to pay out the full-promised bonus once he hits that mark.
There was no way that Oscar Collazo was going to let Reyneris Gutierrez hang around any longer than necessary. The 27-year-old Boricua made quick work of his overmatched challenger. Collazo dropped and subsequently dropped Nicaragua’s Gutierrez in the third round of his WBO strawweight title defense Saturday evening at Footprint Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
Oscar Collazo entered fight week with the mindset that his title defense was going to end well inside the distance. The unbeaten WBO strawweight titlist entered the arena floor well aware that he had to deliver on that promise.