Top Rank announces rescheduled August fights

As the first set of fight cards concluded Tuesday night inside the bubble at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the next round of Top Rank bouts inside that venue were announced for late August.

On Aug. 22, there will be a WBO light heavyweight title eliminator bout between Joe Smith Jr. and Eleider Alvarez, which initially was scheduled for July 16. That fight was postponed in June when Alvarez suffered a shoulder injury in training.

The winner of Smith-Alvarez will face the winner of a fight between Umar Salamov and Maksim Vlasov, which has yet to be scheduled, for the vacant WBO light heavyweight title. Canelo Alvarez vacated that title after defeating Sergey Kovalev in November.

On Aug. 29, unified junior welterweight titlist Jose Ramirez will face his WBC mandatory challenger, Viktor Postol. This bout has been rescheduled twice because of the coronavirus. It was first scheduled for China on Feb. 1 and then on May 9 in Fresno, California.

For Ramirez, this will be his first bout since July 27, 2019, when he stopped Maurice Hooker in six rounds to add the WBO title to his collection.