Representatives for junior middleweight world titlist Patrick Teixeira and mandatory challenger Brian Castano made a deal for the fight late Tuesday.
Eric Gomez, the president of Golden Boy Promotions, which promotes Teixeira, and Castano promoter Tom Brown of TGB Promotions cut a deal around 11 p.m. ET Tuesday, thus avoiding a purse bid scheduled for Wednesday morning at a hotel in Miami, where the highest bidder would have taken control of promotional rights to the bout.
“We made a deal late, in the 11th hour. It will be a tough, competitive fight,” Gomez told ESPN on Wednesday morning, after having previously termed the odds of a deal between the camps as “no chance.”
Gomez said the fight would take place on a Golden Boy card in April or May.
“We have a few options,” Gomez said.
Asked what the breakthrough was to take the camps from “no chance” of making a deal to agreeing to one, Gomez said, “They got off the million dollar boat.” But he declined to disclose terms for the bout.
Had it gone to a purse bid the minimum bid required by the WBO was $200,000 with the split being either 80-20 or 75-25 in Teixeira’s favor, depending on where the bout took place.
Teixeira (31-1, 22 KOs), a 29-year-old southpaw from Brazil, won the vacant interim 154-pound world title by unanimous decision over previously unbeaten Carlos Adames on Nov. 30 in a tremendous action fight in which Teixeira overcame major trouble to drop Adames in the seventh round for what turned out to be the winning margin.
The following week, Teixeira was elevated from interim titlist to the full titleholder when Jaime Munguia, as expected, vacated the title in order to move up to the middleweight division.
Castano (16-0-1, 12 KOs), 30, of Argentina, is a former secondary junior middleweight world titlist. He made two successful defenses, a 12th-round knockout of Cedric Vitu on his turf in France in March 2018 and an action-packed split draw with division stalwart Erislandy Lara last March at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Last June, Castano was stripped of the belt for not signing to face mandatory challenger Michel Soro. Castano returned on Nov. 2 and knocked out Wale “Lucky Boy” Omotoso in the fifth round.