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Steve KimESPN
Top Rank announced on Thursday that Mexico’s Jonathan Rodriguez was unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States, which has caused the postponement of his bout against junior bantamweight world titlist Jerwin Ancajas on Saturday at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
“This is a weird one because all of the paperwork was in,” Carl Moretti, the director of boxing operations for Top Rank, told ESPN. “I think the mess up was that the visa that was sent, was sent to his home city and he was training in another part of Mexico, and that means you have to go through the whole process again. It just got confusing the whole week and we played it out as long as we could.”
Top Rank announced that the 10-round junior welterweight clash between Javier Molina and Hiroki Okada will now serve as the new co-main event of the Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card (ESPN and ESPN Deportes, 10:30 p.m. ET with preliminaries beginning on ESPN+ at 7:30 p.m. ET), which is headlined by the bout between WBC junior lightweight champion, Miguel Berchelt and Jason Sosa.
Moretti said the Ancajas-Rodriguez bout will be re-scheduled or Ancajas (31-1-2, 21 KOs) will move onto some other fight. Ancajas, who was already in Southern California to prepare for his eighth junior bantamweight title defense, is coming off a sixth-round knockout of Ryuichi Funai on May 4.
“We’re amenable to any opponent on any date, if it’s Rodriguez, if he works out all his issues, or whoever comes up,” said Sean Gibbons of Manny Pacquiao Promotions, which represents Ancajas.