WBO featherweight champion Rafael Espinoza weighed in at 125.6 lbs, while his opponent, Sergio Chirino, came in at 125.6 pounds on Thursday at the weigh-in for their headliner this Friday night, on June 21st at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. The event will be shown live on ESPN+ starting at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT.
(Credit: Mikey Williams/Top Rank)
The 6’1″ Espinoza (24-0, 20 KOs) is coming off an upset 12-round majority decision win over the two-time Olympic gold medalist and WBO featherweight champion Robeisy Ramirez last December.
That was a big surprise because it looked like Robeisy would knock out Espinoza early on after dropping him in the fifth round and having him hurt. However, Robeisy let Espinoza off the hook by not going to the finish, and he came back to wear him down with his volume punishing to get the win.
Chirino (22-1, 13 KOs) has only lost once earlier in his career and has looked good against the little-known opposition he’s been facing. He’s got his work cut for him in this fight against Espinoza unless he can come up with a big shot to knock him out.
Complete Weights:
– Rafael Espinoza 125.6 vs. Sergio Chirino 125.6
– Andres Cortes 130.8 vs. Abraham Nova 129.7
– Troy Isley 158.9 vs. Javier Martinez 159.8
– Floyd Diaz 117.8 vs. Francisco Pedroza 117.5
– DJ Zamora 131.5 vs. Jose Antonio Meza 131.2
– Steven Navarro 115.7 vs. Juan Pablo Meza 114.8
– Bryan Polaco 156 vs. Richard Acevedo 156.3
“He shocked me and everybody else by beating Robeisy Ramirez, the two-time Olympic gold medalist. That was a great accomplishment. He’s undefeated and very popular in Mexico,” said promoter Bob Arum to Sean Zittel, talking about WBO featherweight champion Rafael Espinoza ahead of his fight this Friday night against Sergio Chirino in Las Vegas.
“Chirino is also undefeated and popular. These Mexican fighters fight under the radar, when they’re brought on the big stage, many of them perform very well. I think this is going to be a very exciting fight on Friday night.
“The fighters do the fighting. We do the promoting and arrange who fights whom. If all the fights followed a script, it wouldn’t be interesting,” said Arum, discussing Espinoza’s upset win recently against WBO 126-lb champion Robeisy.
“What makes boxing interesting is Espinoza’s upset with Ramirez. We have Espinoza fighting next week in Florida, and if he comes through and Espinoza comes through, we’ll do a rematch because it was a very interesting fight last time they fought.
“Everybody is jockeying in the featherweight division because the world is next year; Inoue will go up to featherweight,” said Arum.
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