Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn has been busy lining up bouts for the undercard of the fight between middleweight world titlist Billy Joe Saunders and mandatory challenger Demetrius Andrade that will take place on Oct. 20 at the TD Garden in Boston.
Hearn and the fighters will appear at a news conference scheduled for Friday in Boston to discuss the fight and the undercard bouts, all which will stream live on DAZN, the all-sports platform that launches in the United States next month and with whom Hearn has an eight-year deal.
Two notable fights that will be on the card include junior lightweight world titleholder Tevin Farmer making his first defense against European champion James Tennyson and a featherweight world title elimination fight between Kid Galahad and Toka Kahn Clary, who will square off for the right to become the mandatory challenger for world titlist Josh Warrington.
Also, former junior featherweight titlist Scott Quigg (34-2-2, 25 KOs), 29, of England, will return on the undercard against an opponent to be determined for his first bout since a bruising decision loss to world titlist Oscar Valdez in a March 10 fight for which Quigg failed to make weight and could not win the belt.
Farmer (26-4-1, 5 KOs), 28, of Philadelphia, is returning to the ring very quickly after winning a vacant 130-pound world title by dominant unanimous decision against Billy Dib on Dib’s turf in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 3.
Farmer promoter Lou DiBella told ESPN they are in the process of finalizing the paperwork for the fight with Tennyson and a co-promotional deal with Hearn that will keep Farmer active on his DAZN cards for “good money.”
“Tevin wanted to be an active champion and fight as often as possible and the deal we were able to work out with Eddie was very favorable to Tevin’s career,” DiBella told ESPN. “Tennyson will make for an interesting clash of styles. He’s a big puncher, Tevin is a supreme boxer. It should be a fun fight.”
Tennyson (22-2, 18 KOs), 25, of Northern Ireland, is traveling to the United States for the title opportunity but Hearn hopes he will draw from Boston’s sizeable Irish community. Tennyson has won six fights in a row since a fifth-round knockout loss to Ryan Walsh in April 2016. He has been knocked out in both of his defeats but he is coming off a fifth-round knockout win over Martin Joseph Ward on May 5 to claim the European title.
Earlier this month, promoter Frank Warren won a purse bid for $20,000 for the right to promote the fight between Galahad (24-0, 15 KOs), 28, of England, and Kahn Clary (25-1, 17 KOs), 26, of Providence, Rhode Island. However, the date he wanted to put the fight on was outside of the IBF’s 90-day window for the fight to take place, which Galahad objected to.
A new purse bid was ordered and scheduled for Sept. 4 but Hearn, who works with Galahad but missed the purse bid, and Real Deal Boxing promoter Eric Bentley, who promotes Kahn Clary, made a deal this week for the fight to be on the Oct. 20, Bentley told ESPN.
The card will also include the already announced fight between unified women’s lightweight world titleholder Katie Taylor (10-0, 5 KOs), 32, of Ireland, defending against Cindy Serrano (27-5-3, 10 KOs), 36, of Brooklyn, New York.
Hearn recently signed former two-time junior middleweight titlist Andrade (25-0, 16 KOs), 30, of Providence, using his war chest of money from DAZN and made a deal with Warren to bring Saunders (26-0, 12 KOs), 28, of England, to Andrade’s home region for the title defense that headlines the show.