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Xander Zayas Jorge Garcia Perez Confirmed For July 26 To Headline Top Rank's Final ESPN Show
NEWS
Keith Idec
Keith Idec
RingMagazine.com
Xander Zayas-Jorge Garcia Perez Confirmed For July 26 To Headline Top Rank's Final ESPN Show
Top Rank announced Thursday what is planned to be the last telecast of the prominent promotional company’s eight-year content partnership with ESPN.

Xander Zayas (21-0, 13 KOs), of Sunrise, Florida, and Mexico’s Jorge Garcia Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) will fight for the vacant WBO junior middleweight title in the 12-round main event ESPN will televise July 26 from The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Brooklyn’s Bruce "Shu Shu" Carrington (15-0, 9 KOs) and Namibia’s Mateus Heita (14-0, 9 KOs) are scheduled to box for the WBC’s interim featherweight title in the 12-round co-feature.

The opener of ESPN’s tripleheader July 26 will feature Emiliano Vargas (14-0, 12 KOs), a lightweight prospect from Las Vegas, in an eight-round bout against Ecuador’s Alexander Espinoza (20-3-1, 9 KOs).

The Ring and other outlets reported three months ago that ESPN executives informed promoter Bob Arum and Top Rank president Todd duBoef that it would not renew its output deal with the company.

Top Rank has been the exclusive supplier of ESPN’s boxing content since July 2017, when then-unknown Brisbane, Australia, underdog Jeff Horn, fighting in his hometown, upset Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao unanimously on points and took the WBO welterweight title from him at Suncorp Stadium.



Top Rank agreed to a seven-year deal with ESPN in 2018 once it attracted the type of viewership, often more than 1 million on average, in its first year. Viewership, however, has steadily declined since then, though that is true of most sports broadcast on linear television in the United States.

Top Rank has not announced which platform will televise and/or stream its cards after July 26.

Zayas, 22, and Garcia, 28, will fight for an unclaimed WBO belt Sebastian Fundora (22-1-1, 14 KOs) gave up to participate in a rematch with former WBO champ Tim Tszyu (25-2, 18 KOs) on July 19 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Zayas is ranked No. 1 by the WBO, one spot ahead of the second-rated Garcia Perez.

Garcia Perez, who is ranked No. 10 by The Ring, upset previously unbeaten contender Charles Conwell (21-1, 16 KOs) by split decision in his last fight, a 12-rounder April 19 at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Carrington, 28, is the WBC’s No. 1 contender in the 126-pound division for Stephen Fulton’s title and The Ring’s seventh-ranked featherweight. Heita, 27, is ranked 13th by the WBC and is not ranked by The Ring.

Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing.

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