Isaac Dogboe vs Cesar Juarez world title fight to be staged in Ghana

Paul Dogboe, dad and trainer of Isaac Dogboe, has revealed that the WBO interim world bantamweight title fight between his son and Mexico’s Cesar Juarez would be staged in the Ghana.

At last week’s WBO convention in Cuba, the sanction body mandated the two fighters to fight for the interim world title due to an injury to the WBO bantamweight champion Jesse Magdaleno.

Reigning champion Jessie Magdaleno was forced to drop out of his November fight with #1 contender Cesar Juarez, and his medical notification indicated he would not be available to fight until March or April.

This opened up a fight between Juarez and the next available contender, which according to the rankings was Filipino Marlon Tapales. But Tapales announced he was not available to fight as soon as needed to fight for a vacant interim title due to problems he was having with his trainer.

This opened the door for the next available contender: Ghana’s #3 ranked contender Isaac Dogboe.

“Isaac was mandated to fight Caesar Juarez,” senior Dogboe said “Because Juarez is the number one contender his promoters was supposed to stage this fight in Mexico, what happened was we agreed a purse bid to stage the fight in Ghana. So we told Paco Valcárcel [WBO president] that we can stage this fight in Ghana.”

He continued, “They have made Isaac the face of WBO in Africa, and they want to come to Africa, the WBO president himself want to come to Africa. Because they want to open a new chapter in Africa and they are using Isaac. We offered them (Juarez’s team) a substantial amount of money to come to Ghana, so that the interim world title fight would be held in Ghana which they have accepted.”

Regarding the date for the upcoming fight, senior Dogboe said:

“By Monday, we have a date but we are putting two dates out there, either January 6th or 13th (The first week in January or the second week). We are putting two dates there because we have to raise the money, it is a lot of money especially to bring the WBO president to Ghana, where we are going to put him, his team, the officials and Juarez’s team (four of them). I mean we are bringing tourism to Ghana, the WBO president himself coming to Africa, Ghana. So January is where we want the fight,” he concluded.

Dogboe won his last fight after stopping Argentina’s Javier Chacon in round seven while Juarez also stopped Eugene Lagos in round four.