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Arnold Khegai’s first fight with Top Rank could take place on a Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) show.
TGB Promotions won a purse bid hearing for an ordered IBF featherweight title eliminator between Khegai and Lerato Dlamani. The PBC-predominant outfit bid $71,000 to edge Top Rank ($65,000) during Tuesday’s session.
South Africa’s Dlamani will earn 75 percent of the bid ($53,250) as the higher ranked contender. Khegai is due the remaining 25 percent ($17,750) as the number three contender, one place below Dlamani.
TGB has 14 days to return signed contracts to the IBF and 90 days from Tuesday’s purse bid to stage the fight. The winner will become the mandatory to IBF featherweight titlist Luis Alberto Lopez (30-2, 17 knockouts), No. 1 at 126.
Per IBF Rule 9.c, both boxers are required to move forward with the fight to avoid being demoted in the IBF rankings.
Dlamani (20-2, 11 KOs) is seemingly all in for the eliminator. He even abandoned a previously scheduled March 31 rematch with Tomoki Kameda in Nagoya, Japan. The two were due to run it back after Dlamani scored an upset decision win last October 7 in Tokyo.
However, a trap door clause was in Dlamani’s contract. Kameda Promotions was required to gain sanctioning from the IBF as a title eliminator. The absence of those stakes provided Dlamani with room to walk from the fight.
An arguably tougher assignment awaits in Khegai, (21-1-1, 13 KOs), a Ukraine-born boxer of Korean descent.
Khegai has won five straight fights since a January 2020 defeat to then-unbeaten Stephen Fulton in Brooklyn, New York. The bout was a sanctioned WBO 122-pound title eliminator. Philadelphia’s Fulton (21-1, 8 KOs), No. 1 at 122, went on to win the WBO and WBC titles at the weight.
The defeat was the last at 122 for Khegai, now a featherweight and who has since signed with Top Rank. His most recent victory came in a third-round knockout of Jon Martinez on January 27 in Barcelona, Spain.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for The Ring and vice president of the Boxing Writers Association of America.
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