HBO Boxing brings us a couple of title fights tonight with a main event of Vasyl Lomachenko (7-1, 5 KOs) defending his WBO Super Featherweight belt against Jason Sosa (20-1-4, 15 KOs) at the MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
The big undercard actually isn’t the other title fight. Instead its Oleksandr Gvozdyk (12-0, 10 KOs) facing off against Yunieski Gonzalez (18-2, 14 KOs).
The other title fight is Oleksandr Usyk (11-0, 10 KOs) putting his WBO Cruiserweight title up against Michael Hunter (12-0, 8 KOs). All these crazy names are from the Ukraine if you were wondering.
As always, scroll on down for the live blog. Keep reading for the press release from HBO.
TODD duBOEF: On behalf of Top Rank we would love to thank HBO, the No. 1 premium channel in the world with great programming all the time, and MGM, who we have a great relationship with in Las Vegas and all over the world; and obviously both fighters — Jason Sosa has had an incredible rise especially over the past year and gotten himself a title and Vasyl Lomachenko, having only eight professional fights, has people declaring that he is pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world and was also considered by many the Fighter of the Year last year. We love making matches like this. You are talking about two of the top, top fighters in the division. We know it’s going to be an incredible fight between two guys deserving of the accolades they have received.
RUSSELL PELTZ: Thanks, Todd. We are really looking forward to this challenge. Jason had a terrific year last year and he won the title in Beijing, defended it in Monte Carlo and will now be fighting the man that everyone is calling the best fighter in the world which I guess we will find that out on April 8th. Jason is up for the challenge – he is a real fighter and real fighters fight. We will see if he can match his skills with Lomachenko and I believe that Jason’s trainer, Raul Cheno Revas is as good a trainer as there is in the world today. You may not have heard a lot about him but I think you will in the coming years. We are going into this fight, obviously as we would in any fight, to win.
I met Chino is 2012 – I went to another promoters fight in the Northeast section of Philly — I was there to scout a lightweight named Anthony Bergen who turned pro that night and I was impressed and when the fight was over I met Chino and we made an agreement that night to sign Anthony Bergen and he said to me at the time ‘if you want Bergen you have to take Jason Sosa.’ Jason had about 7 or 8 fights at the time and I had seen him a few times and said ‘I really don’t want to do that.’ He said, ‘It’s part of the package.’ And I don’t want to say I reluctantly agreed because Jason always made great fights and I knew it. So Jason came along as part of the package. Like, when was Tom Brady drafted? So that’s what happened to Jason, he turned out to be the main fighter in my stable ever since.
The fights are on HBO at 10 p.m. Watch them with me.
