Photo by Stephanie Trapp/Showtime
Last week when the championship clash between Vasyl Lomachenko and Jason Sosa was announced as the first fight to be featured at the MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, MD, Gary Russell Jr.’s (27-1, 16 KOs) brother, Gary Antonio Russell, took to Instagram to post news regarding his brother’s March 11 title defense against Oscar Escandon (25-2, 17 KO).
The Instagram announcement that Russell Jr. would actually be featured in the first fight night at the MGM was met with excitement from local boxing fans in the DMV, but also with some skepticism.
But today, USA Today reported that Stephen Espinoza informed them that a title doubleheader is indeed in the works for March 11 at the MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md.
The Theater at MGM National Harbor is the newest entertainment venue in the Washington DC area and features a 3,000 seat, state of the art experience.
The co-main event will include Jermell Charlo’s mandatory title defense against Charles Hatley.
“I hope to defeat Escandon without any problems. I plan to unify all the titles later and I want to do it soon,” said Russell Jr. to WBCBoxing.com.
Escandon should be familiar to DC-area boxing fans as he knocked out Robinson Castellanos at the DC Armory in March of 2016.
Russell Jr. was originally set to face Escandon in November of 2015 in Las Vegas but suffered a cut during training.
Header photo by Esther Lin/Showtime
