Three of boxing’s best young contenders — middleweight Jaime Munguia, welterweight Vergil Ortiz Jr. and lightweight Ryan Garcia — will headline the first three Golden Boy Promotions events of 2022, and two already have opponents.
Golden Boy is planning to kick off its slate on Feb. 19 with Munguia taking on D’Mitrius Ballard in a fight that was scheduled earlier this year but called off due to a Ballard elbow injury, a source told Fight Freaks Unite on Thursday.
Ortiz was initially ticketed to kick off the year on Jan. 22, but his date has shifted to March 19, when he will take on Michael McKinson, the source said.
Then Garcia will return on April 2 after more than a year out of the ring to face an opponent to be determined, although, according to sources, an offer has been made to Isaac Cruz. On Dec. 5, Cruz lost a disputed decision to secondary lightweight titlist Gervonta Davis in a Showtime PPV main event, after which Garcia called him out.
According to a source, the broadcaster for the events has not yet been determined.
Golden Boy’s deal with sports streaming service DAZN, which began in late 2018, recently expired and the companies have been working to close a new deal for the past few weeks, but it is not done.
As Fight Freaks Unite reported on Nov. 22, Golden Boy and DAZN were on the verge of a new three-year deal that would keep Oscar De La Hoya’s company’s events and roughly 50 fighters it has under contract on DAZN. A source in November said the negotiations for the new deal were “at the 2 yard line.”
Golden Boy’s deal with DAZN was initially for five years but renegotiated in December 2020 as part of the settlement of Canelo Alvarez’s breach of contract lawsuit against both entities that resulted in him becoming a promotional and broadcast free agent.
In a late October interview with Fight Freaks Unite, DAZN executive vice president Joe Markowski addressed DAZN’s relationship with Golden Boy when asked about the impending expiration of their contract. Although he did not want to get into any details about a new deal, he was bullish on the relationship.
“I don’t want to speculate where we’re at with contractual stuff. It’s just not what we do, but our relationship with Golden Boy is great and we love working with them,” Markowski said. “They deliver great value. They’ve got a great roster of fighters who speak to our base, who deliver value. We have a good, very, very healthy relationship with Golden Boy. We have an ongoing relationship with Golden Boy. We’re planning to do lots more work with Golden Boy. We plan to do many more fights with Golden Boy in the future.”
Munguia (38-0, 30 KOs), 25, a former junior middleweight world titlist from Mexico, headlined a DAZN card on Nov. 13 and outpointed Gabriel Rosado in a tremendously exciting fight.
Munguia’s previous fight saw a date change an opponent changes. He was supposed to face Poland’s Maciej Sulecki on April 23 but Sulecki pulled out with a back injury and replaced by Ballard. Then Ballard suffered an elbow injury and had to withdraw, forcing the card to move to June 19. Sulecki came back in as the opponent on the new date but then pulled out again for no apparent reason and was replaced by Poland’s Kamil Szeremeta, a former title challenger Munguia stopped in the sixth round of a one-sided beating.
Now Ballard (21-0-1, 13 KOs), 28, of Temple Hills, Maryland, is healthy, having returned from the injury to win a 10-round decision over Paul Valenzuela Jr. on the Munguia-Rosado undercard at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
Ortiz (18-0, 18 KOs), 23, of Dallas, scored his biggest win in his last fight, knocking out former world title challenger Egidijus Kavaliauskas in the eighth round of a DAZN card on Aug. 14 in front of a home region crowd at the Ford Center in Frisco, Texas.
Next up is McKinson (21-0, 2 KOs), 27, a southpaw from England, with a limited resume, who will be fighting in the United States for the first time. Ortiz could soon become the next mandatory challenger for WBO titleholder Terence Crawford, who generally fights as a left-hander, so perhaps Golden Boy selected McKinson to get Ortiz a look at a southpaw.
Garcia (21-0, 18 KOs), 23, of Victorville, California, is one of boxing’s most popular fighters, but he has been idle since scoring his biggest win, a seventh-round knockout Luke Campbell, a 2012 Olympic gold medalist from England and former world title challenger, on DAZN this past Jan. 2.
Garcia was scheduled to defend the WBC interim title against Javier Fortuna in a mandatory fight on July 9, but in late April Garcia announced he had withdrawn from the fight to take a break from boxing in order to address a mental health issue.
He was stripped of the interim belt and former junior lightweight titlist Joseph Diaz Jr., another Golden Boy fighter, faced Fortuna on July 9 and won a unanimous decision to claim the vacant interim title.
Garcia planned to return to face Diaz this fall but then he suffered a hand injury that required surgery and forced him to withdraw. He is still rehabbing his hand but will be cleared to fight by April and hoping to face Cruz (22-2-1, 15 KOs), 23, of Mexico.
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