By Allan Fox: WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (13-0, 8 KO’s) will be defending his titles on July 19th against #8 WBA Sod Kokietgym (63-2-1, 28 KO’s) at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. This will be the final fight of Rigondeaux’s contract with Too Rank and it’s unclear whether he’ll be re-signing with them.
Chinese star Zou Shiming will be headlining the card against an opponent still to be determined.
The Ringondeaux-Kokietgym fight won’t be televised on HBO.
Rigondeaux’s current promoter Bob Arum told ESPN’s Dan Rafael “This fight is the end of the contract. We owe him this fight and we will live up to the contract and then it’s over. We’re happy to make a new deal with him if he wants to renegotiate. But HBO won’t put him on, so the only market I have for him is in Asia.”
That’s not good if HBO won’t be televising Rigondeaux’s fights on their network. Unless Top Rank can open up China for pay-per-view soon, it’s likely going to mean little chances for Rigondeaux to get exposure if his fights are going to be in China or if they’re not going to be televised.
If Rigondeaux leaves Top Rank at the end of his contract, it’s still uncertain whether Showtime would want to televise his fights or not.
Rigondeaux is so good that his fights become dull because there’s no one that can compete with him at 122 right now, or at least there’s not been any fighter yet that’s shown enough talent to give Rigondeaux problems. There are some good fighters in the super bantamweight division like Kiko Martinez, Carl Frampton, Scott Quigg, and Leo Santa Cruz, but none of them have been matched against Rigondeaux as of yet. The chances are we probably won’t see any of them matched against him any time soon.
Previously, Jonathan Guzman had been mentioned as the fighter that would be facing Rigondeaux for his next fight on July 19th, but it looks like Arum decided to switch him out for Kokietgym.
Kokietgym, 36, hasn’t lost a fight since 2006 when he was knocked out in the 1st round by Daniel Ponce De Leon. Interestingly enough, that was the last time that Kokietgym fought a well-known opponent. Since then, Kokietgym has won his last 37 fights, albeit against weak opposition rather than world class fighters. He’s still ranked fairly high at No.8 by the WBA, but it’s not a good sign that he was knocked out in the 1st round by De Leon in the last instance where he fought a good opponent.
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