Junior middleweight contenders Carlos Adames and Patrick Teixeira had the stakes raised for their upcoming fight on Tuesday.
Adames and Teixeira are scheduled to fight on the Oscar Valdez-Andres Gutierrez undercard at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas on Saturday (ESPN+, 6:30 p.m. ET), but instead of the bout being a world title eliminator for the right to become the mandatory challenger for titlist Jaime Munguia, as originally planned, the bout was sanctioned Tuesday to be for the WBO interim title, with the winner likely to be elevated to the full titleholder at next week’s WBO convention in Tokyo.
That is because Munguia announced last week that he is moving up to the middleweight division for his next fight, which will come against Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan on Jan. 11 at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Munguia has not officially vacated his 154-pound title, which is why Adames-Teixeira is for the interim belt, but Munguia probably will formally vacate during the convention, which runs from Monday through Thursday.
“It doesn’t change what will happen in the ring on Saturday night, but obviously, given the stakes being raised, the winner of the fight is going to be in a great position and to eventually be recognized as a world champion and rightly so,” Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti told ESPN.
The Robert Garcia-trained Adames (18-0, 14 KOs), 25, of the Dominic Republic, is 5-0 with three knockouts since he debuted for Top Rank in May 2018. He is the favorite.
Teixeira (30-1, 22 KOs), 28, a southpaw from Brazil, has won four fights in a row since his only defeat, a second-round knockout to former world title challenger Curtis Stevens in May 2016. Now he is stepping up again against a formidable opponent.
The decision that the fight would be for the interim belt came on the same day that Munguia and O’Sullivan met face to face at a news conference to kick off the promotion for their 12-round fight, which will headline a Golden Boy card on DAZN.
“I’m excited to be moving up to 160 pounds, where they say that some of the most important fighters in boxing are,” Munguia said at the news conference, referring to elite middleweights such as champion Canelo Alvarez and titleholder Gennadiy Golovkin. “I have a very tough fighter in front of me, Gary O’Sullivan, who’s very tough. If I want those bigger fights, then I have to demonstrate that I’m worthy of that against this guy. So I have to do my best in order to rise up in the rankings. I look forward to delivering a great fight for Mexico.”
Munguia (34-0, 27 KOs), 23, of Mexico, made five 154-pound title defenses, but struggles with weight led to the decision to move up to 160 pounds.
“He gives everything in the ring, and he concentrates 100 percent at what he does,” said Erik Morales, the Hall of Famer who won titles in four divisions and now trains Munguia. “For me it’s also a big challenge because he is a novice who has to work on a lot of things, and we have to prepare for a very tough opponent. We have to make a lot of fixes and changes. The goal is to one day fight big fights against big fighters, and we have a lot of things to work on before that.”
O’Sullivan (30-3, 21 KOs), 35, of Ireland, will be a huge underdog because the three times he stepped up in opposition he lost badly, a near-shutout decision to two-division world titlist Billy Joe Saunders in 2013, a seventh-round knockout to top contender Chris Eubank Jr. in 2015 and by first-round destruction to former titlist David Lemieux on the Alvarez-Golovkin II undercard in September 2018. He has won two low-level fights since the blowout loss to Lemieux.
“I’m really excited about this, and I’m looking forward to it a lot,” O’Sullivan said. “Jaime Munguia is a great fighter. I’m very motivated by this challenge. He’s a young world champion, undefeated. For many, this is the stuff of dreams to come to his backyard and fight the undefeated champion of the world. I’ve never felt the more motivated in my career.”