Jermell Charlo and Brian Castano have a home for their undisputed 154 lb championship fight on July 17, as the Showtime crew will head to the AT&T Center in San Antonio for the event.
Charlo (34-1, 18 KO) unified the WBC, WBA, and IBF titles last September with his win over Jeison Rosario. Castano (17-0-1, 12 KO) took the WBO title from Patrick Teixeira in February, and the fight between these two was put together pretty quickly, and will crown a true king at junior middleweight.
The Showtime undercard is also set, two fights like normal.
In the co-feature, lightweight prospect Rolando “Rolly” Romero (13-0, 11 KO) will take on Austin Dulay (14-2, 10 KO). The 25-year-old Romero took some major criticism — even though he didn’t score the fight — for his controversial decision win over Jackson Marinez in Aug. 2020, but looked sharper, stronger, and more impressive beating Avery Sparrow in January. The Marinez fight may well have proven to be a legitimate learning experience for Romero, something he can build from and maximize his ability.
Dulay, 25, is a Nashville southpaw coming off of a win in November of Jose Gallegos, but he was beaten pretty handily by Diego Magdaleno in Feb. 2020, and also was stopped by Chris Colbert back in 2018. Those were his two most notable fights, but we’ll see how Romero handles a southpaw, and it’s also sort of a last chance for Dulay to really get himself going. He’s young so that sounds harsh, but a loss here and he becomes a guy who’s probably going to go into a prospect checker type of role — arguably, that’s what he’s doing now, despite Romero’s lofty status as WBA interim titleholder.
The opener will see middleweight prospect Amilcar Vidal (12-0, 11 KO) face veteran Immanuwel Aleem (18-2-2, 11 KO), which I think is a nice matchup for both.
Vidal, 25, is based in California now but originally from Uruguay, so he’s got a chance to break out for a country that doesn’t have much by way of pro boxing stars. He fought on a ShoBox in 2019 and stopped Zach Prieto in the first round, and stopped Edward Jermaine Ortiz in the second round on an FS1 card last November.
The 27-year-old Aleem isn’t much older than Vidal, but a lot more of a known quantity. He’s a solid southpaw pro, 2-2-2 in his last six fights. He drew with Demond Nicholson, stopped then-unbeaten Ievgen Khytrov in six, was stopped by Hugo Centeno Jr in three, beat Juan De Angel, drew with Matt Korobov (highly controversial for many reasons), and lost a majority decision to Ronald Ellis last time out. He hasn’t fought since Dec. 2019.
