Patrick Teixeira’s inaugural WBO title defense against Brian Castano was among the early COVID casualties, and we’ve yet to hear any word on its status in the last few months. Yesterday evening, the sanctioning body gave Golden Boy 10 days to announce the bout’s date and location alongside Teixeira’s immigration status and stateside arrival date. Should they fail to do so, the teams will head to a purse bid 10 days later.
The resolution also lays out the bout’s timeline, though they accidentally swapped “2020” in for “2019” in some of the earlier dates and made it hard to read. In short, after the April 25th date fell through and COVID effectively locked down the world, Teixeira (31-1, 22 KO) found himself unable to secure a visa due to Brazil’s US embassy closing. He made another attempt to get his visa earlier this month, only for his appointment to be “unilaterally canceled.” Castano’s (16-0-1, 12 KO) team pushed for a 30-day deadline to secure the fight, with Teixeira being stripped upon failure, but that was denied.
Ultimately, the WBO acknowledges that Teixeira’s issues are outside of his control, but that progress needs to be made for both Castano’s sake and that of the other super welterweight contenders. Hence, the solution outlined in the first paragraph.
I do hope they get this figured out, because it would be a really fun matchup.