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Mike CoppingerESPN
Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Eimantas Stanionis will meet in a rescheduled welterweight bout on April 29 in Texas, sources told ESPN on Thursday.
The 147-pound matchup was set for March 18 but postponed after Stanionis underwent an emergency appendectomy in his native Lithuania earlier this month.
Oritz’s promoter, Golden Boy, won the rights to the WBA “regular” welterweight title fight at last month’s purse bid with a commitment of $2.3 million and will stream the fight on DAZN.
Golden Boy will kick in additional money to make Ortiz, who is a far bigger star than Stanionis in the U.S., whole. The Lithuanian boxer won the secondary title with a split-decision victory over Radzhab Butaev in April and is entitled to 75% of the winning bid, while Ortiz will earn much more than the $575,000 he’s set to make via the purse bid.
The bout shapes up as a coin-flip matchup between two pressure fighters in one of boxing’s best weight classes.
Ortiz (19-0, 19 KOs) is rated No. 4 by ESPN at welterweight. The 24-year-old broke through last year with a pair of stoppage wins over Maurice Hooker and Egidijus Kavaliauskas. Ortiz, who fights out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was set to fight Michael McKinson in March, but it was postponed after Ortiz was hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis.
Rhabdomyolysis is a breakdown of muscle tissue that releases the damaging protein myoglobin into the blood, which can lead to kidney damage. Ortiz went on to score a ninth-round TKO of McKinson in August and will now step way up in class.
Stanionis (14-0, 9 KOs) is ESPN’s No. 6 boxer at 147 pounds. He also owns a win over Thomas Dulorme.