Notebook: Puello fight off, belt in jeopardy after failed drug test
Cordina wants old title back; Stanionis-Ortiz rescheduled; Collazo retires after KO loss; Quick hits; Show and tell
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LAS VEGAS — WBA junior welterweight titlist Alberto Puello’s first defense is canceled and he is poised to be stripped of the belt after testing positive for the banned performance-enhancing drug Clomiphene.
Puello was due to defend the 140-pound title against Rolando Romero in a Showtime-televised main event on May 13 at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. However, sources told Fight Freaks United on Wednesday that the fight is off after Puello and others involved in the bout were notified by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association on Tuesday that he had tested positive for Clomiphene, a fertility drug for women that can dramatically increase testosterone levels if taken by a man.
Clomiphene is the same substance that disgraced British welterweight Conor Benn twice tested positive for that forced his major fight with Chris Eubank Jr. to be canceled last October and has left his career in tatters.
Puello (21-0, 10 KOs), 28, a southpaw from the Dominican Republic, provided a urine sample to VADA on April 5 in Las Vegas, which came back positive, according to the letter sent by VADA to those involved and obtained by Fight Freaks Unite.
Puello has the right to have his B sample tested at his expense, but it would highly unusual for it to come back any different from the positive A sample. If Puello elects to have the B sample tested and it is also positive for Clomiphene the WBA said it will strip him. If he doesn’t seek the B sample to be tested he would be stripped immediately.
Showtime plans to move forward with the May 13 card with Romero (14-1, 12 KOs), 27, of Las Vegas, likely to face Ismael Barroso for either the interim title or what could by then be the vacant full title. Barroso (24-3-2, 22 KOs), 40, a southpaw from Venezuela, is the WBA mandatory challenger and was scheduled to box on the undercard.
Puello won a split decision over Batyr Akhmedov on Aug. 20 in a Showtime fight in Hollywood, Florida, to claim the vacant title. Barroso was due the next shot, but he agreed to step aside to allow Puello to first face Romero.
See below for the full VADA letter on the matter:
Cordina seeks to regain belt
Former IBF junior lightweight titlist Joe Cordina was stripped of his title due to a hand injury but now has the chance to regain it in his return.
Cordina, the mandatory challenger, will face Shavkatdzhon Rakhimov, who claimed the vacant 130-pound belt while Cordina was sidelined by the injury, on Saturday (DAZN, 2 p.m. ET) at Cardiff International Arena in Cardiff, Wales, Cordina’s hometown.
Cordina was scheduled to make the first defense against Rakhimov in Abu Dhabi in November but the hand injury and subsequent surgery forced him out and he was stripped because he was unable to defend against Rakhimov (17-0-1, 14 KOs) before it was due.
Rakhimov, 28, a southpaw from Tajikistan, instead rallied from a third-round knockdown to stop England’s Zelfa Barrett in the ninth round to win the vacant belt.
“My first week back sparring, I threw my first proper backhand and I just felt something pop in my hand and I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God’,” Cordina said. “The lady at the x-ray told me it was a clean break. I had the operation. It was after my surgery that I knew I was getting stripped. That wasn’t a nice moment, I’m not going to lie. I was in a bit of a bad place. I didn’t really want to see people. I was stuck in the house for like two weeks. Then I was like, ‘fuck this, I need to get out.’”
Cordina (15-0, 9 KOs), 31, was ringside when the Freddie Roach-trained Rakhimov beat Barrett but knew when his hand was healed he would get a chance to reclaim his old belt.
“It was quite frustrating me being there and watching those two; I’m not going to lie,” Cordina said. “In my head that’s my belt, I need to get that back. I never lost my title in the ring, I haven’t had a chance to defend it. I’m going into this fight as a challenger, but in my head I’m a world champion and I have the confidence of a world champion.”
New date for Stanionis-Ortiz
The twice-postponed fight between WBA “regular” welterweight titlist Eimantas Stanionis and mandatory challenger Vergil Ortiz Jr. has a new date.
The fight is penciled in for July 8 and will headline a Golden Boy card on DAZN, Golden Boy president Eric Gomez told Fight Freaks Unite and was confirmed by Stanionis manager Shelly Finkel. Gomez said they are looking for a site to host the bout.
The fight was scheduled for April 29 at the College Park Center on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington in Arlington, Texas, which is the home region for Ortiz, who is from nearby Grand Prairie. However, Ortiz was forced to withdraw due to a recurrence of rhabdomyolysis, a condition that occurs when damaged muscle tissue releases proteins and electrolytes into the blood. It can damage the heart and kidneys and in the most severe cases cause death.
Gomez said the College Park Center is not available to host the fight July 8.
It is the second time Ortiz has dealt with the issue, which also forced the postponement of a March 2022 fight.
Ortiz and Stanionis were initially scheduled to fight on March 18, but the fight was postponed in January because Stanionis had to undergo an emergency appendectomy, which he has fully recovered from.
Stanionis (14-0, 9 KOs), 28, of Lithuania, and Ortiz (19-0, 19 KOs), 25, were both limited to just one fight apiece in 2022. Stanionis won the “regular” 147-pound belt by action-packed split decision over Radzhab Butaev in April. Ortiz just had the ninth-round KO of McKinson.
Golden Boy won the promotional rights to the fight at a purse bid in mid-December for $2.3 million to beat an offer of $2,100,100 made by TGB Promotions.
Collazo retires
Former welterweight titlist Luis Collazo (39-9, 20 KOs), 41, announced his retirement on Wednesday night after suffering a sixth-round knockout loss to Angel Ruiz (18-2-1, 13 KOs) in a junior middleweight bout that topped the ProBox TV card in Plant City, Florida.
Collazo, who was fighting for the first time in 20 months, got knocked down twice in the third round, first by a left hand and then he was ruled down again when the ropes held him up.
In the sixth round, Ruiz, 25, a Mexico native based in Los Angeles, drilled Collazo with a right to the belly, dropping him for the count at 32 seconds.
During his 23-year career, Collazo, a southpaw from Brooklyn, New York, based in Riverview, Florida, faced a who’s who, including Shane Mosley, Ricky Hatton, Amir Khan, Keith Thurman, Andre Berto and Eimantas Stanionis.
“I’m done. This is the end for me now,” Collazo said. “Ruiz did what he had to do and came out with the victory. I give them credit and wish him nothing but the best. Now I will get to spend more time with my family and with the grandchildren.”
Quick hits
TGB Promotions on Tuesday was the only bidder at the IBF purse bid to determine the promotional rights for its vacant bantamweight title between Melvin Lopez (29-1, 19 KOs), 25, of Nicaragua, and former titlist Emmanuel Rodriguez (21-2, 13 KOs), 30, of Puerto Rico. TGB offered $25,000, which will be split 50-50 ($12,500 apiece) between the boxers if they elect to take the fight. Since TGB promotes all of the PBC cards the bout would land on one of them in the coming months. The winner would claim one of the 118-pound titles that became vacant when undisputed champion Naoya Inoue relinquished all four major belts in January.
British junior welterweight champion Dalton Smith (14-0, 10 KOs), 26, one of England’s best up-and-comers, and Commonwealth champion Sam Maxwell (17-1, 11 KOs), 34, of England, will meet with both of their titles at stake on July 1 (DAZN) at Utilita Arena in Sheffield, Smith’s hometown, Matchroom Boxing announced on Wednesday.
Red-hot British junior welterweight prospect Adam Azim (8-0, 6 KOs), 21, who headlines a Boxxer card on Sky Sports on June 10 at York Hall in London, now has an opponent: Aram Fanyan (22-1, 4 KOs), 26, of Ukraine, Boxxer announced. Heavyweight Frazer Clarke (6-0, 5 KOs), 31, who was a 2020 British Olympic bronze medalist, will also be on the card in what is supposed to be preparation for a shot at British champion Fabio Wardley later in the year.
The women’s flyweight title unification bout between WBC titleholder Marlen Esparza (13-1, 1 KO), 33, of Houston, and WBO counterpart Gabriela Celeste Alaniz (14-0, 6 KO), 26, of Argentina, has been postponed because of Alaniz’s issues obtaining a visa in a timely fashion, Golden Boy president Eric Gomez told Fight Freaks Unite. The bout was scheduled to take place on the undercard of the William Zepeda-Jaime Arboleda lightweight bout April 29 (DAZN) in Arlington, Texas. Esparza-Alaniz could be rescheduled for Golden Boy cards on May 27 or July 8, depending on how quickly Alaniz’s visa comes through.
This past Saturday Japanese southpaw brothers Yudai Shigeoka (7-0, 5 KOs), 26, and Ginjiro Shigeoka (9-0, 7 KOs), 23, both won by knockout on the same card in Tokyo to claim vacant interim strawweight titles. Yudai stopped former titlist Wilfredo Mendez (18-3, 6 KOs), 26, of Puerto Rico, in the seventh round to win the WBC version and Ginjiro rebounded from a first-round knockdown to score four knockdowns and stop former titlist Rene Mark Cuarto (21-4-2, 12 KOs), 26, of the Philippines, in the ninth for the IBF version. Both fights were permitted with the organization’s full titleholders sidelined by injury/illness.
Show and tell
After eight dominant WBC junior lightweight title defenses, Floyd Mayweather moved up to lightweight. In his first fight in the division he took on WBC titleholder Jose Luis Castillo, the No. 1 fighter in the world at 135 pounds. It turned out to be one of Mayweather’s toughest fights. He took the first few rounds with ease, but an injured shoulder and Castillo’s dogged determination and constant pressure got him back into the fight, although he was penalized one point by referee Vic Drakulich for hitting on the break in the eighth round. Mayweather was penalized one point for elbowing in the 10th round.
In the end, Mayweather claimed a title in a second weight class with an extremely unpopular decision — 116-111, 115-111 and 115-111 — that was booed loudly by the crowd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. HBO unofficial scorer Harold Lederman had Castillo winning 115-111, as did many. I was writing for USA Today at the time and had it 114-114 watching on TV. They would have an immediate rematch eight months later that Mayweather also won by close decision. The first fight was on April 20, 2002 — 21 years ago Thursday. Here is an extraordinarily rare (and giant) site poster in my collection. It originally hung in an MGM Grand light box during fight week.
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Photos: Puello: Esther Lin/Showtime; Rakhimov-Cordina: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing; Ortiz: Cris Esqueda/Golden Boy
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Rollie Romero is about to become a "legitimate" champion. The WBA continues to be a joke and embarrassment.
Douchebag Rolly continues to fall upward, as he has an easier path to a title. Oof.
Looking forward to seeing Cordina back in action; this fight should provide some clarity on how good he really is.