A long-discussed fight for the last remaining bantamweight title has a firm date and a tentative location.
BoxingScene.com has learned that the Emmanuel Rodriguez-Melvin Lopez vacant IBF bantamweight title will take place August 12 at a yet-to-be-confirmed venue in the greater Washington D.C. area. The update comes two months after Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) informed the IBF that July 15 was in play, though mostly as a placeholder at a point when its summertime schedule was still taking shape.
TGB Promotions obtained the rights to the bout as the lone bidder during an April 18 hearing conducted via Zoom from IBF headquarters in Springfield, New Jersey. A minimum accepted bid of $25,000 was placed to secure the rights to the fight, though both boxers are expected to make far more than the result of the purse bid hearing.
The winner will fill the vacancy left behind earlier this year by Naoya Inoue (24-0, 21KOs), who will challenge unified WBC/WBO junior featherweight titlist Stephen Fulton (21-0, 8KOs) on July 25 in Tokyo.
Puerto Rico’s Rodriguez (21-2, 13KOs; 1NC) previously held the IBF bantamweight title, which he claimed in a May 2018 victory over England’s Paul Butler. Just one successful defense followed—a twelve-round victory over Australia’s Jason Moloney—before he was stopped inside of two rounds by Inoue in May 2019.
Moloney has since claimed the WBO bantamweight title in a May 13 unanimous decision win over the Philippines’ Vincent Astrolabio in Stockton, California.
It was a rough road back to contention for Rodriguez, who made his way to the top of the queue after a one-sided, technical decision win over Gary Antonio Russell last October 15 in Brooklyn, New York. The bout was packaged as part of a four-man box-off ordered by the IBF, which included Astrlolabio’s sixth-round knockout of Nikolay Potapov last December 17 in Las Vegas.
Astrolabio (18-4, 13KOs)—who is also guided by Gibbons—opted to instead pursue the vacant WBO bantamweight, which left Rodriguez as the highest-ranked contender.
It also paved the way for Lopez (29-1, 19KOs) to enter the title picture. The development was redemption for the Miami-based Nicaraguan who was previously in line to challenge for the WBA title before a February ratings update bumped him out of contention.
Lopez has won eight in a row since suffering his lone career defeat, a ninth-round knockout of Jose Velazquez in October 2019. His most recent win came in a ten-round decision over Jobert Alvarez last December 11 in Orlando, Florida, as part of a show on the eve of the WBA Centennial Convention.
The win should have secured his place in line for a fight with Japan’s Takuma Inoue, Naoya’s younger brother and the leading WBA bantamweight contender. Inoue went on to defeat Venezuela’s Liborio Solis to win the WBA title, the first vacancy filed in the wake of Naoya’s departure from the division.
Rodriguez-Lopez will come four weeks after the lone other vacant title fight still on the schedule. Ironically, that moment will come on the July 15 date once budgeted for this fight, but will instead see former four-division champ Nonito Donaire (42-7, 28KOs) and Alexandro Santiago (27-3-5, 14KOs) vie for the vacant WBC bantamweight title.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox